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.