Old suburban country gardens.(Poem)

 
OLD SUBURBAN COUNTRY GARDENS 
 
   They are full of incomplete dreams 
   hedges which have grown too high 
   fallen fences gone to seed 
   dandelion garden tennis courts 
   a mineral not vegetable mangle 
   rusting in peace, its gutta percha roller 
   white hard as the sheets it pressed-- 
   somewhere beyond the wild-haired china pears 
   there is the cap of the well 
   backed up on to the night-soil lane 
   morning glory trumpets in tangled hexagons of chook-wire, 
   in there too, laid to deceive and lost, 
   the bantams' china egg, first adult lie, 
   down here is the long tangle of grass 
   no push-mower ever cut 
   only a wary grand-father could scythe it down 
   home of the brown snake with rebellious rocks 
   keen to take the edge off an old ...