the reason I've included this poem, which may seem totally out of context for this blog - was that I recently dreamt about a wonderful bronze statue of the author and poet John Betjeman - which was or is, in ( I think ) the Saint Pancras Train station in London.
It's a life size bronze full body portrait of the Poet, social critic, activist and art historian.
He's looking up at the sky, as if looking at a cloud, or a plane, or something off far in the distance thats caught his eye... in a kind of quizzical and relaxed manner he peers.
I remember walking by the statue in a hurry, but drawing up short and being immediately, deeply struck by the beauty of the sculpture and by the extraordinary brilliance of the sculptor. It was actually breathtaking.
He'd caught a single moment so eloquently, a man innocent and unawares, as if real, a small, normally private, incidental fragment of a life.
It was really, truly beautiful, and to my jaded, ubercooly cynical hipster mind, it was a real good lesson in just shutting up and having a look.
And so it thus occurred to me, rather sadly I must admit, that you guys would probably never ever read his poems unless forced to by a berating Englishman. That the wonderful ironic wit and genuine sadness of his words would never be noticed by you, in just the same way, that the beautiful statue had gone unnoticed by me. So I'm trying to set that right. Read it. Think of it as a coin you've found in your pocket.
Slough - by John Betjeman (1906 - 1984)
"Slough", as in now, is a ten-stanza poem by Sir John Betjeman, first published in the 1937 collection Continual Dew. It was written in protest against 850 factories that were to be built in the English town of Slough. The poem caused an uproar when first published. Slough was becoming increasingly industrial and housing conditions were truly terrible. In willing the destruction of Slough, Betjeman urges the bombs to pick out the vulgar profiteers but to spare the bald young clerks.
Slough
Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!It isn't fit for humans now,
There isn't grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!
Come, bombs and blow to smithereens
Those air -conditioned, bright canteens,
Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans,
Tinned minds, tinned breath.
Mess up the mess they call a town-
A house for ninety-seven down
And once a week a half a crown
For twenty years.
And get that man with double chin
Who'll always cheat and always win,
Who washes his repulsive skin
In women's tears:
And smash his desk of polished oak
And smash his hands so used to stroke
And stop his boring dirty joke
And make him yell.
But spare the bald young clerks who add
The profits of the stinking cad;
It's not their fault that they are mad,
They've tasted Hell.
It's not their fault they do not know
The birdsong from the radio,
It's not their fault they often go
To Maidenhead
And talk of sport and makes of cars
In various bogus-Tudor bars
And daren't look up and see the stars
But belch instead.
In labour-saving homes, with care
Their wives frizz out peroxide hair
And dry it in synthetic air
And paint their nails.
Come, friendly bombs and fall on Slough
To get it ready for the plough.
The cabbages are coming now;
The earth exhales.
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