By It was county council green, wooden, with
metal-rimmed wheels and a curved roof
like a Roma caravan, and a triangular limber
for towing by clanking, ponderous steamrollers –
before petrol driven lorries took the road menders
to and fro in what, for a time, would have seemed
like no time at all. This one – abandoned pre-war –
was parked, throughout my childhood, on the verge
at a country cross roads.
It entered my dreams. I thought God worked there,
hunched in his robes above an operating table,
serious in his beard, bringing forth babies.
Whenever I approach that cross roads,
I remember the dream and being a child
and the image of God, though God
and childhood have long been abandoned.
abandonedcaravanchildhoodcounty council greenGodlimbermetal-rimmedsteamrollers
John Huddart
November 3, 2014Hardy could have passed this way! He too would have relished leaving that delightful conundrum at the end – of both childhood and God having been abandoned when the poem indicates quite clearly that both of them remain intrinsically interesting.