Flying Home at Christmas
Flying home at Christmas ... 0 cloudy memory
Unroll your private film, yield up your fleeting echoes,
Those quick snatches of childhood joy and misery ...
Now see suburbia slip by, Tudor-and-russet-brick,
While after mediocre mile; past modern pub and group of shops
Out to the mild and smokeless air ringing the Airport.
Then watch the sun of saddle afternoon quicksilver the wing-tip.
(A dirty scrap of newspaper eddies: yesterday’s muddled headline lie.)
And now we rise, soon viewing below a child’s toy set -
Row on row of irregular, red-roof-tiled villas,
Each desirable residence with its patch of faded green
Like a played-over and scratched, billiard-table top.
Look down! look down!
(The blase traveller merely lights a cigarette)
At the smole-wound haze of London town!
Mist drifts like cotton wool, condenses on the pane;
But high above the clouds we view a foamy—coloured sea,
And look! - the horizon’s bloodshot, copper-red.
Then, feeding on present sights, old memories return,
Each jigsaw shape and colour to the eager traveller,
Who troubles like an excited child.
