Wild geese cross the marshes. Their creaking wakes me,
Their honk, autumnal but clear as the church clock's chime
Telling the hours, a music of passage, recurrence
Heard in grey dawnlight still tinged with the whiteness
Of last night's moon on the low mist hanging
Over fields newly reaped . . .

Drifting back, a schoolboy, I drowse in the nineteen-thirties,
High up in a house for which little had happened,
Little changed in a hundred years,
Across rooftops at peace, gardens all self-absorbed
Hear cries of caged beast and bird from the London Zoo.
Closer and louder, the clatter of horseshoes on tarmac,
Cavalcade, for exercise only,
Of soldiers from Ordnance Hill Barracks.
One whinny from that, and the tame creature fused
With gibbon, condor, with either's keeper
...