I’m not sure who decided that today is World Poetry Day, but why not? Here’s a poem from The Evening Entertainment.
THE KITCHEN GARDEN
On Capability Brown’s last visit
to this well-temperèd chalkland estate,
he plumped for action instead of advice:
training espaliers of local pears,
which would otherwise have become extinct,
against ev’ry venerable wall of brick—
‘for market opportunities’, he said,
and focused eyes on an artichoke head
whose outer bracts formed interlaced patterns
around the heart’s delirious embrace,
aubergine-veined chroma of grey–jade green.
He claimed it resembled ‘a scarecrow’s brain’.
Unaccountably, he bricked up the arch,
to dead-end our last remaining path;
so now unscaleable walls enclose us,
in God’s own country’s Hortus conclusus.
