GRAVY

The Head
Crystal Palace Park

In the middle of a lockdown, I am lost
in the living maze. The hornbeam hedge, unminded
now for months, remembering its lopped

off limbs, grew headstrong. Wildering, it blinded
its own eye, sewed shut the famous rings,
turning against the maker that designed it.

Turning again, each path re-roots to bring
me, though I hardly mind, to the same dead
end. I have forgotten everything

but these three things: the root of Penge, the head
-less sculpture loitering outside the maze,
and one more piece of what I’d always said

was useless trivia, which means three ways,
a forking road, the point where lost begins.
Lost in the mid-Eighties, it was Dante’s,

the head. I’d like to think it wore a grin.
Penceat: from the Welsh for ‘head’ and ‘wood’.
Whichever way I turn leads further in.

The statue’s standing where Penge Place once stood,
demolished for that looking-glass, the Palace,
whose weightless walls shine like they never could

when it existed. Living backwards, Alice,
has one advantage in it, said the Queen.
I don’t remember it. Pre-emptive malice?

Or knowing that we’re where we’ve always been,
that turning back does not mean losing ground?
I like it here. I’m lost but hell it’s green.

Green as a thought, and no-one else around,
which reminds me. Trivia can mean
common place; something easily found.

This poem by Tristram Fane Saunders, our host for Gravy #2: Poetry in the Park, appears in his debut collection Before We Go Any Further (Carcanet, 2023). Why not order a copy?