Cutting Class

We slip by the brick estates
patterned like a lizard’s back,

then suburbs where the conifer’s
black flames stand sentinel;

we pass the clipped, unseelie gardens,
pace through the witchcraft

of the giant leaves of planes,
wade against the smoking tide

of insect-faced and swollen cars.
We skirt the sewage works,

cross over the motorway’s grey
cortege to the sign

language of the countryside –
Egypt’s pylons scanning the fields,

evil spores in the undergrowth,
...