Sitting Tight (Poetry)

For the first time
since they started work
I walked past the fenced-off site today

and saw beneath the lowered sky
the great wound they had made —
that ghastly gape of ruined clay

An average-sized and kindly bomb
might well have caused less damage to
a popular and once-quite-pleasant place

where familiar shops had settled almost quaint
into their easy commerce several decades long
since wiped away — toppled without trace

The afternoon already depressed enough
as February grizzled cold near-sleet
on land laid waste, battered ugly —
                                        rough and yellow-puddled

Then
        all of a sudden
                        in a ragged bush surviving by the path
a twittering commotion started up above my head —
a handful of birds — excited sparrows — peeping down
from where they cheeped and (even now) so resolutely
                                                                        huddled