Glass houses

IN cramped and dingy suburb gardens
seen from the train,
pathetic, the small glass-houses huddle
holding the warmth from grudging sunshines
and inside the favoured greenness gropes to
touch the misted pane.

Sedulous here the cultivating
of the frail bloom
safe from the filming soot of factories
and more genial the climate than
the chilly garden with its threat of
a frost-black tomb.

From the train window inward turning
to my own mind,
I see the plants I tend and cherish there
from leaf to bud, from bud to blossom,
the cold shut out, the bleak sky softened
to one more kind:

but brittle glass is so often broken
nor soon replaced,
the wind shrills through the jagged entry of
the lounging corner-boy's envious stone;
rain drips through the roof and another winter
must be faced.

13 May 1946