UNEASY REFLECTIONS

DETERMINEDLY peppered with signs, The omnibus ambles without curiosity. Southampton Row, Malborne Road, Charing Cross— These names have no relation To the buildings they partition If one mutters, “I shall go to Euston Road,” Imagination is relieved of all errands And, decently ticketed, enters the omnibus. If one muttered, “I shall go to protesting angles, Surreptitiously middle-aged, And find a reticent line to play with,” One would violate The hasty convenience of labels And seriously examine one’s destination. If poplar-trees, brief violets and green glades On any country road had each received An incongruous name—Smith’s Tree, C. Jackson’s Clump, or Ferguson’s Depression— And city streets had never known a label, Most poets would have turned their fluid obsession On lamp-posts and the grandeur of ash-cans. It would be grimly realistic now To write about a violet or a cow.