On days when the sun shines we stop work,
go into our garden with books, coffee, wine, fruit;
it will not shine for long, and we must make the most of it.
The garden is violet and misty blue,
full of ferns and skiophilic flowers,
but I remember it as it once was
in summer, blazing with hot vermilion,
bronze, gold, chrome yellow, as the fields were
yellow with dandelion, ragwort, rape.
More people are coming now,
more of them every day, swarming north
with their cracked skin, flayed faces, dust-filled eyes.
They think us a haven. Sometimes we almost laugh. Among those
assigned to us, the wizened children, desert-dried, touch the fruits
we can still grow – raspberries, redcurrants,
dark acid cherries espaliered against a wall –
as though they were jewels. And they laugh at us
when we seek the sunlight, mothlike. They have sunned themselves
enough. As…
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