Upping Sticks

for Florence

I’ll be away soon from my old knockabout palace,
  and a rich forest of leaves in the garden beyond.
The rusty old key I shall turn, and lower the portcullis,
  and off to fresh pastures . . . and a new deepening bond
with the roof of day and night in a groundwork of colours.
  But I shall miss, sometimes, a spot of which I was fond.

At an old ironwork table with a leaf-motif,
  I’d abandon my crossword for a master-clue,
a gleam in the eye of the sun. An inventive
  twist to the hard fact of Earth . . . till it grew
a simple beauty no more than intuitive.
  A clue that’s not to sit still and construe.

From the old table I’d go up to the berberis,
  to a copper-wit welcome . . . so to do the rounds
of a talkative village. A moment with the blackberries
  hanging out over a fence. Within these bounds
to savour the words of the free and the sweetly barbarous
  has been my delight. Tomorrow to new grounds.