The Summer of 1911

Music cartwheels across country house lawns

And the susurrus of lemonade poured over ice

Promises another phosphorus day to come

And,perhaps,by late afternoon, a thunderstorm.


Champagne flutes are raised to the light

By pallid ladies under white parasols

And strawhatted beaux reclining in hammocks;

Breathing the smell of roses and verbena,

They chase one another round temples and grottoes.


The cricketers stroll out and take their positions.

A child floats,drowned,in the village pond,

Lured there by the Aztec sun.


Gentlemen lounge all day at their London clubs,

While ladies consult with the cook over the dinner menu,

Arranging eight courses with care.

At 10 p.m.,in Mayfair houses,sweet musk of lilies

Censes the candlelit hallways,where polished guests

Indolently ascend grand staircases in regal pairs,

Angels on a Jacob’s ladder of lies.


Young Winston Churchill stands at the fireplace,

Holding forth to a salon gathering,

Addressing himself in the mirror

With grandiloquent periods and rehearsed bon mots.

The buccaneer. The wild card. The traitor.


From ball to ball she dances,Lady Diana Manners,

Now a black swan, now a Spanish infanta,

Afraid to stop for a moment lest the daybreak

Catch her and turn her to stone.

Eighteen and beautiful, everyone’s darling,

She drinks the pink champagne of life

And scandalizes the staid with rebellious excess.


Boredom and unease afflict the indolent,

Waiting,longing for something to happen,

To break the routine of wasted days

Between the tennis court and the Ouija board.


At Covent Garden Nijinsky leaps

And stops mid-air,the six-year-old boy

Chucked into the river by his father

To learn to swim;choking, drowning,

He saw a light above leading him home

Through the murk, and,surging upwards,

Shoved the water downwards around him,

To break through the surface and breathe


Grantchester. Rupert Brooke and friends

Saunter at midnight down the dusty lane

And across the meadow to the old mill pool;

Breathing the reek of wild peppermint and mud,

They strip and jump naked into the cool

And bask in the moonlight and the smell

Of freshmown hay.The sun is love,is truth.

And a glorious harvest is swelling.