Lame again, I limp home along Lawn Terrace
with a flowering sun star in a paper wrap
then back to the village with a lame cat
twisting and woeful in her cage.
Bread these days isn't baked to last:
how sad those posh loaves thudding off
in pine breadbins all around the Heath:
soulless latterday pets, frisky for a day
or two, then binned or thrown to foxes,
loaves just an inch of gloom below
the caged birds you notice in corners
of those same mansions when you seek
the past, dinking their mirrors, dipping
once in a while for a sip of milk.
