Under a splendid chestnut tree

Under a splendid chestnut tree 
The rector clenched his fists 
And swore that God exists,
Clamping his features stiff with certainty 
Twenty-five steps to the pond and ten to the hedge,
And his resolution had wilted round the edge,
Leaving him tilting a blind face to the sky,
Asking to die:
To die, dear God, before a scum of doubt 
Smear the whole universe, and smudge it out.'
Meanwhile the bees fumbled among the flowers,
The gardener smoked, the children poked about,
The cat lay on the baker's roof for hours.

Just then (but miles away) there knelt 
A corpse-faced undergrad 
Convinced that he was bad:
His soul was just a sink of filth, he felt.
Hare's eyes, staring across his prayer-locked hands,
Saw, not a washstand-set, but mammary glands;
All boyhood's treasure-trove, a hortus siccus 
Of tits and knickers,
Baited his unused sex like tsetse flies,
Till, maddened, it charged out without disguise 
And made the headlines. But the Gothic view 
Was pricked with lamps and boys' street-distant cries, 
Where chestnut-burrs dropped, bounced, and split in two.

Thus at the end of Shady Lane 
A spinster eyed a fir 
That meant to fall on her.
Watching it crouch and straighten and crouch again, 
Her bright and childless eyes screwed up with dread.
And in the north a workman hugged his bed,
Hating the clouds, the stained unsightly breath 
Of carious death.
Down centuries of streets they sit and listen 
Where children chalk out games and gas-lights glisten, 
Taking both voices in old arguments,
One plate, one cup, laid in the same position 
For the departed lodger, innocence.