Before
Sean O’Brien, 8 December 1988
“... Make over the alleys and gardens to birdsong, The hour of not-for-an-hour. Lie still. Leave the socks you forgot on the clothes-line. Leave slugs to make free with the pansies. The jets will give Gatwick a miss And from here you could feel the springs wake By the doorstep and under the precinct Where now there is nobody frozenly waiting. This is free time, in the sense that a handbill Goes cartwheeling over the crossroads Past stoplights rehearsing in private And has neither witness nor outcome ... ”