Waiting for the night to take its long effect <br />on the avenues’ calm and winding wondrous walks; <br />a boy of just sixteen slips outside and stalks <br />the roads where lamplight leaves the moonlight wrecked <br />in catastrophic streaks, shimmering through hedges. <br />He moves about the rich areas of the village <br />like a conscript to an age, his hands primed to pillage <br />even the plant-pots that hang from window ledges. <br /> <br />But he is not a thief, and in the riverside homes <br />he sees nothing which he would inflict upon himself; <br />the lanky yachts where weeds in the water combs <br />his thoughts to the voices and the majestic sounds <br />that money makes: he looks, this is not wealth; <br />it’s a frantic godliness, exchanged for pounds. <br /> <br /> <br />(The Broads: miles of man-made rivers and lakes in East Anglia, the edges of which are inhabited by swans, bitterns and the super-duper rich.)<br /><br />Stug Jordan<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/broads-boy-poem/
