Ivan Head: A Few Late Chrysanthemums

Reading A Few Late Chrysanthemums

I

I don’t know whether Betjeman

saw chrysanthemums in a florist shop

after seasonal flowers had gone;

or, simply lingering in a winter garden

where some survived frost.

Perhaps in nineteen fifty-four

they were an antidote

to mild despair, some post-war care;

the great smog, the nuclear air,

the ambiguity of the annual way

twenty-five years before the Poet Laureate.

This verse styled Medium, Gloom, and Light

helped make his name

and still is found and bought today.

II

This summer

I looked for the hydrangeas’

blue and mauve, and pink through white,

expecting that on the shaded southern side

the yield for vases would be great;

but found instead

that as the sun came overhead

they wilted early and were gone.

In the absence of rain

no lad was hired

to water and sustain

these late and cooling blooms;

an easy commonwealth of delight

had passed away.

Ivan Head