Swerving east, from rich industrial shadows
And traffic all night north, swerving through
fields
Too thin and thistled to be called meadows
And now and then a harsh-named halt, that
shields
Workmen at dawn; swerving to solitude
Of skies and scarecrows, haystacks, hares
and pheasants
And the widening river’s slow presence
The piled gold clouds, the shining gull-marked
mud
Gathers to the surprise of a large town
Here domes and statues, spires and cranes
cluster
Beside grain-scattered streets, barge-crowded
water
And residents from raw estates, brought down
The dead straight miles by stealing flat-faced
trolleys
Push through plate-glass swing doors to their
desires
Cheap suits, red kitchen-ware, sharp shoes,
iced lollies
Electric mixers, toasters, washers, driers
A cut-price crowd, urban yet simple
Dwelling
Where only salesmen and relations come
Within a terminate and fishy-smelling
Pastoral of ships up streets, the slave museum
Tattoo-shops, consulates, grim head-scarfed
wives
And out beyond its mortgaged half-built edges
Fast-shadowed wheat-fields, running high as
hedges
Isolate villages, where removed lives
Loneliness clarifies
Here silence stands
Like heat
Here leaves unnoticed thicken
Hidden weeds flower, neglected waters quicken
Luminously-peopled air ascends
And past the poppies bluish neutral distance
Ends the land suddenly beyond a beach
Of shapes and shingle
Here is unfenced existence
Facing the sun, untalkative, out of reach
