ANYWHERE


SUNDAY TEA-TIME

There is a noise of winkles on the air,

Muffins and winkles rattle down the road,

The sluggish road, whose hundred houses stare

One on another in after-dinner gloom.

"Peace, perfect Peace!" wails an accordion,

"Ginger, you're barmy!" snarls a gramophone.

A most unhappy place, this leafless Grove

In the near suburbs; not a place for tears

Nor for light laughter, for all life is chilled

With the unpurposed toil of many years.

But once—ah, once!—the accordion's wheezy strains

Led my poor heart to April-smelling lanes.