The Habs Poet Laureate, Anjali, has composed this poem about our recent Carol Service. We think it’s rather lovely.
Sewing Haberdashers
Green as a seed, footsteps thread through the city
like runners, Habsgirls sprigs like mint flowering
in little fragrant clumps, drifting, eddying,
a ripple in backwards motion.
Pull the seams tight and the circles
suck in their breath and
London crumples into St Martin’s fist.
A church blooms green, a knot of thread,
stark like waterlily-lips planted on a water-grey cheek.
The silence is thick, powdered sugar
on your tongue, sweet, curled with waiting.
Dry whispers cling to the walls and thicken like cobwebs.
Fifty years condensed to a drop, the pregnant swell of a note
thundering, thickening yellow in the white eggshell.
Wake O wake, flower, ripple, kiss the syrupy history floating by
Just as sweet, just as green, a humming stream
pooled to a shared heartbeat thumping
through the city’s stitched streets.
