Poem
Helen Dunmore
City Lilacs
City Lilacs
City Lilacs
In crack-haunted alleys, overhangs,plots of sour earth that pass for gardens,
in the space between wall and wheelie bin,
where men with mobiles make urgent conversation,
where bare-legged girls shiver in April winds,
where a new mother stands on her doorstep and blinks
at the brightness of morning, so suddenly born —
in all these places the city lilacs are pushing
their cones of blossom into the spring
to be taken by the warm wind.
Lilac, like love, makes no distinction.
It will open for anyone.
Even before love knows that it is love
lilac knows it must blossom.
In crack-haunted alleys, in overhangs,
in somebody’s front garden
abandoned to crisp packets and cans,
on landscaped motorway roundabouts,
in the depth of parks
where men and women are lost in transactions
of flesh and cash, where mobiles ring
and the deal is done — here the city lilacs
release their sweet, wild perfume
then bow down, heavy with rain.
© 2007, Helen Dunmore
From: Glad of These Times
Publisher: Bloodaxe, Northumberland
From: Glad of These Times
Publisher: Bloodaxe, Northumberland
Helen Dunmore
(United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1952)
Helen Dunmore was born in Yorkshire and studied at the University of York. She began to write poems as a child, and has published nine collections of poetry, of which the most recent is Glad of These Times (2007). Her second collection, The Sea Skater, won the Poetry Society’s Alice Hunt Bartlett Award; The Raw Garden was a Poetry Book Society Choice, and her collection of poems for childr...
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City Lilacs
In crack-haunted alleys, overhangs,plots of sour earth that pass for gardens,
in the space between wall and wheelie bin,
where men with mobiles make urgent conversation,
where bare-legged girls shiver in April winds,
where a new mother stands on her doorstep and blinks
at the brightness of morning, so suddenly born —
in all these places the city lilacs are pushing
their cones of blossom into the spring
to be taken by the warm wind.
Lilac, like love, makes no distinction.
It will open for anyone.
Even before love knows that it is love
lilac knows it must blossom.
In crack-haunted alleys, in overhangs,
in somebody’s front garden
abandoned to crisp packets and cans,
on landscaped motorway roundabouts,
in the depth of parks
where men and women are lost in transactions
of flesh and cash, where mobiles ring
and the deal is done — here the city lilacs
release their sweet, wild perfume
then bow down, heavy with rain.
From: Glad of These Times
City Lilacs
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