Progress in Bimble Town

Progress in Bimble Town

(Dedicated to the Mayor and Corporation.)

Bimble-bay has a steep street:
it runs down with many houses,
tall ones, short ones; shops with meat,
shops with cabbages, shops with blouses,
jersies, jumpers and umbrellas;
a post-office (new and squalid);
a library filled with best-sellers
in yellow jackets; an old, solid,
manywindowed inn where motors
make strong smells, and no horse goes
in cobbled yard; a place where bloaters
from wooden boxes lie in rows
(brought by train for sea-side air);
a pharmacy with sunburn-lotion
and picture-cards (of Godknowswhere,
and fat women dipped in ocean);
a toy bazaar with things of tin,
and bits of crock, and all the news;
windows, windows with chocolate in,
cigarettes, and gum one chews
(wrapped in paper, cased in card,
for folk to strew on grass and shore);
loud garages, where toiling hard
grimy people bang and roar,
and engines buzz, and the lights flare,
all night long — a merry noise!
Sometimes through it (this is rare)
one can hear the shouts of boys;
sometimes late, when motor-bikes
are not passing with a screech,
one hears faintly (if one likes)
the sea still at it on the beach.
at what? At churching orange-rind,
piling up banana-skins,
gnawing paper, trying to grind
a broth of bottles, packets, tins,
before a new day comes with more,
before next morning’s charabangs,
stopping at the old inn-door
with reek and rumble, hoots and clangs,
brings more folk to Godknowswhere
and Thedontcare, to Bimble Town
where the steep street, that once was fair,
with many houses staggers down,

See Britain First!