Canterbury Pilgrims

Not in ‘Aprille with his shoures sweete’
But in the month of shining barley fields
We come to Canterbury,
Six centuries too late for Chaucer.

Here is no nun
No gat–toothed wife of Bath.
We lack her vital salt.
Our clothes and manners
Are unspecified by trade or class.

Bobbing and jiggling in this bus
Are forty heads
Of silver, grey (not mauve),
Carefully crisped to look identical
As dandelion clocks.
On forty laps of floral Crimpelene
Sit forty handbags
Under as many pairs of folded hands.

Yet we are pilgrims too.
Journeying on
Over the shining fields, we nurse
Under the floral frocks
Obscure desires
And unacknowledged hopes,
And crane our ageing necks,
Eager as any for the first sight
Of Canterbury towers.