Limehouse Poppies

Somewhere just West of Limehouse

An emptied yard has lain and slept

Among the brick and rubble

Are promises the poppies kept,

To bloom between the foundation slab,

To stretch between the mortar,

Beneath the girders of the bridge

Beside the dockstill water.

They flourish in obedience

To a hundred-year-old-seed,

They quench with a silk-soft moment

An ancient personal need.

If you rode on a train and saw no life,

No bloom of weed or rose,

Then how would you know you were living

And how would you do what you chose?

Unless the flowers chose to rise

From the rubble where a warehouse stood

We’d have no daily proof of how

Ruins turn good.