The sparrows banter in the bushes
that crowd the walls
of the World’s End alleyway
as I walk to the library.

There is, it seems, much to catch up on.
Winter was bitter cold;
five months that had us by the throat,
five months in our house that were bone lonely.

April. And earth is touched
by the hand of a new sun.
A sun, from its stoked store,
that wants to warm us,

pulls at zips, unbuttons a thick-coated
Saxon taciturn resistance.
The releasing rays bring back lost leisure:
walking back home, in the dry dust

of my road, a black and white tabby
reclines, eyes me disdainfully
with the look of a Cleopatra
on an invisible chaise longue.