*/
When the Americans came,
they didn’t take to our gardens:
the apple orchard smelling of wild garlic,
foxgloves growing among the runner beans.
“Do you have vampires around here?”
a visitor from Carolina asked me.
It was a shambles, Wilfred knew that
nodding wisely as though apologising
for the ill manners of King George,
the clematis purple in the thatched roofing.
But come the softe sonne,
there are oxlips in Fry’s woods,
forget-me-nots in the shallow stream,
lettuce and spring onions for a salad.
It’s certain that fine women eat
A crazy salad with their meat*
I tried to tell them. But they weren’t women,
and didn’t care to listen to a boy.
They preferred the red rosehips
we used for making wine.
Danced outside the village church
round the maypole Jack Parnham made.
Now they’re gone,
the wild garlic has returned.
* W B Yeats, “A Prayer for My Daughter”
William Bedford is a novelist, children’s author and poet. His eighth collection of verse, The Bread Horse, is published by Red Squirrel Press.
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This article appears in the 19 Oct 2016 issue of the New Statesman, Brothers in blood