I love this garden but am grieved when some who praise nature feel they must immediately contrast it with a gleeful loathing of humanity. They wallow in the wrongs that we have done – which indeed we have – but disregard the rest, the kindness and imagination. I walk through the park where a mass of alkanet, madonna blue, mingles with pink campion and cow parsley in glorious array. In the playground I see the children, black and white and pink and brown, with mothers and fathers chatting, exchanging worries and stories. Each keeps an eye on them playing, ready to help or intervene. One encourages a timid boy to climb: 'Put your foot there. Hang on! Yes, that's right!' Another tells her girl who barges in: 'No, we must wait our turn. We share. The swing's for everybody.' With routine toil and tender care day after day forming small citizens. Love is builder of cities. We fall in love and may create new life. We cook and feed a family and guests. All kinds of loving, maybe ecstatic or just ordinary, strong, persistent, unrecorded, goes on everywhere, all the time. Naturally. We are Londoners and I remember moments in London's history. 1936. The Battle of Cable Street when Catholic Irish dockers and many more Eastenders joined their Jewish neighbours to stop the fascists marching through. No pasarán! they shouted in solidarity with Spain. No need to translate the words just the action. And how that watchword echoed in revolutionary Nicaragua in a famous poem which thousands sang: 'Even though we may not be together, love, I promise: No, they shall not pass!' Although defeat and failure come repeatedly, so do kindness and poetic vision. The struggle continues for the shining garden city where everyone can flower. Mortal fellow creatures of the Earth, still is the human form divine and humankind is part of nature not its enemy.
This poem was first published in the Camden New Journal.