When Home among cousins
and the green fields of summer play,
or walking a gently-grassed bóithrín*
hedged high, red-blue fuchsia bells
tinkling silently in the constant sea-breeze,
and, as free as the hares in the fields,
running barefoot and unseen
on soft yellowed open strands,
springing across glistening
sea-shaped stones blessed
by a withdrawing tide,
with the stretching sea
murmuring an untiring summer song
to clouds sailing a big wind
across a reaching sky,
London seemed unreal and distant
but for many of us, born here, or there,
hard London with its
choking smog-heavy winter streets
and summer’s loud and busy black smelly roads
of heated tarmac greedily grasping underfoot
was where the future lay
with its long promise of harder wealth
but always carrying songs of Home,
and the dream of one day returning.

​

bóithrín: boreen: literally small road; narrow,
often poorly paved, rural road in Ireland.