I have unsuccessfully tried two books by Sarah Dunant
(who writes novels about the Italian Renaissance and the Borgias)
because I mixed her up with the late Helen Dunmore,
who wrote a marvellous novel about Leningrad,
called The Siege.
Two Duns made for confusion in my addled brain.
But, on pursuing my error,
I found this fine poem by Helen Dunmore:
In crack-haunted alleys, overhangs,
plots of sour earth that pass for gardens,
in the space between wall and wheelie bin,
where men with mobiles make urgent conversation,
where bare-legged girls shiver in April winds,
where a new mother stands on her doorstep and blinks
at the brightness of morning, so suddenly born —
in all these places the city lilacs are pushing
their cones of blossom into the spring
to be taken by the warm wind.
Lilac, like love, makes no distinction.
It will open for anyone.
Even before love knows that it is love
lilac knows it must blossom.
In crack-haunted alleys, in overhangs,
in somebody's front garden
abandoned to crisp packets and cans,
on landscaped motorway roundabouts,
in the depth of parks
where men and women are lost in transactions
of flesh and cash, where mobiles ring
and the deal is done — here the city lilacs
release their sweet, wild perfume
then bow down, heavy with rain.
* * *
(But lilacs are not that common, and are slow-growing... I wonder if she might have mixed them up with Buddlejas which are everywhere (like fig-trees here), including behind wheelie bins and growing out of walls, but usually flowering later than Spring... More addlement.)
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