Roger Caldwell
A Boy in St Albans
It's an afternoon, it's the seventeenth century,
and a small boy in St Albans
is kicking a ball again and again
against a remnant of the Roman wall
from the ancient city of Verulamium.
The sound of it begins to irritate.
Tomorrow, though he doesn't know it,
the head of King Charles the First
will be severed from his body in Whitehall.
He can't see far, this boy,
no farther than the ball that flies
high into a seventeenth-century sky.
And then falls back again.
But now he has stopped kicking the ball,
it's as if he can see me looking in,
as if he were worried about the future.
Could there ever be a twentieth century,
could there ever be a twenty-first?
Why is it everything has changed?
How is it he seems so antique?
Who could tell him time would run so fast,
that you only have to stop, and bend
to tie your shoelace, and you'll find
that the ball, the Roman wall, and all
your toys and joys have vanished?
Poor child, I'm farther from him now
than he is to the men who built the Roman wall,
the hypocaust, the villas, the mosaic floors,
the town of Verulamium itself, I too
have fallen far, by so much farther
than I could have guessed, into the future.
and a small boy in St Albans
is kicking a ball again and again
against a remnant of the Roman wall
from the ancient city of Verulamium.
The sound of it begins to irritate.
Tomorrow, though he doesn't know it,
the head of King Charles the First
will be severed from his body in Whitehall.
He can't see far, this boy,
no farther than the ball that flies
high into a seventeenth-century sky.
And then falls back again.
But now he has stopped kicking the ball,
it's as if he can see me looking in,
as if he were worried about the future.
Could there ever be a twentieth century,
could there ever be a twenty-first?
Why is it everything has changed?
How is it he seems so antique?
Who could tell him time would run so fast,
that you only have to stop, and bend
to tie your shoelace, and you'll find
that the ball, the Roman wall, and all
your toys and joys have vanished?
Poor child, I'm farther from him now
than he is to the men who built the Roman wall,
the hypocaust, the villas, the mosaic floors,
the town of Verulamium itself, I too
have fallen far, by so much farther
than I could have guessed, into the future.
Page(s) 20
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