As I rise high above the British soil,
a sharper sense of heaven whets my gaze,
and, seeing how this view must ever coil
round the old Box Hill of my school days,
the sweeter seems the world, more lasting, loyal.
This chessboard, spongey like a welcome mat,
green expanding into blue horizon haze
under wind-tousled ghosts, friendly and fat,
whose shadowy, beamy hands caress its pile,
purrs to my fancy like a drowsy cat
in the presence of a paramour's smile.
The bird-fringed silence yields to decibels
of an aircraft's virile roaring for a while,
but soon, the ancient sound returns and swells,
for this unforgotten, slow, sleep-walking sea
is older (while seeming younger) than me.

When ever I gaze through vistas of this kind,
the dull sloth of remembrance, newly fed,
creaks an old window open that once was blind,
revealing a reflection inside my head
of everything before me and behind.
A time-worn memorial I perceive,
gouged with its date but too distant to be read,
from whence, in youth, I stood myself, naïve,
and strained at some milestone of my hopeful will,
where now I have arrived and now believe.
Revolving to see if vision can distil
the future likewise, lo, I find it clear,
for it begins at this point on old Box Hill
above expansive, honest, England here:
a perfect prospect which deeds will merely flaw
but with finer, clearer colours than before.

I'll rise no higher above the British soil
than where my sense of heaven is most keen,
but maybe the time is nigh for my gargoyle
to shout from rooftops to the deaf between
until its tongue unwinds with my mortal coil,
and then, as name and works mythologise,
sing to generations through a paper screen,
uplifting them so they may recognise
border and horizon and expanse and coast,
where peace lies, why love lies and how heaven lies
where babies, birds and bells rejoice the most;
and should they be grateful that I taught them this,
perhaps they'll greet my airy vap'rous ghost
as spaceward they thunder, leaving me in bliss
to drift over or under where worlds must spin,
like a cloud, comfortable among its kin.