<> Unpublished Poems Greacen Estate 19 Jan Linen Hall Library Wednesday, March 16, 2016 TIFF Greacen025 Manuscript Flying home at Christmas English https://www.niliteraryarchive.com/content/greacen025 Linen Hall Library Linen Hall Library Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike CC BY-NC-SA https://www.niliteraryarchive.com/sites/default/files/Greacen025_0.jpg LHL Archive 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. Text