Gray’s Inn Road

by Letitia Cary (April 2024)

Gray’s Inn Road
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As that gargoyle can attest,
A green drainpipe coming forth from its mouth,
This time each week I wander Gray’s Inn Road;
Of Clerkenwell, The City lies south.
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Every corner tells a story,
From the blue balconies in that Art Deco style,
To the cemetery gates that make one imagine
What secrets lurk beneath this mile.
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Once I was just an observer,
But, as the alabaster gargoyle knows too well,
It became the scene of my secret, our tryst,
And now I fear I am going to hell.
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The Church of St. Alban the Martyr,
With its lofty vault that reaches for the sky,
Has become my refuge when on Gray’s Inn Road,
Which now makes me want to cry.
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The touch of his hand,
The look in his eyes,
And everything fell apart.
Between us and the gargoyle of Gray’s Inn Road,
The memory stains my heart.
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Enchants Everything 

Tonight I found myself admiring
The birdsong outside Baron’s Court;
The sapphire skies of twilight;
Margravine Gardens’ stained glass doorways
Looking more bejewelled than ever.

Tonight these sounds and sights,
Though quotidian they are,
Became illumined by your memory;
The knowledge that you’re out there.
Moon waxing here as in your northerly climes.

Tonight every silhouette reminded me
Of how I miss your jet black hair;
Of how it still beguiles me that you even exist;
More still the citrine panes of the hospital
Where your father was once a patient.

Tonight Fulham Palace Road
Became a Bolesław Biegas painting;
I imagined we were spectral figures walking
Beneath castles crystalline;
Our whispers in the evening air.

Tonight the world with which I was almost jaded
Became enchanted again—
Flashing like emeralds, glassy—
Because love enchants everything.
Love enchants everything;
Even when the last light fades.

Table of Contents

Letitia Cary is the pseudonym of a writer from Oxfordshire, England. She takes her name from the 17th century noblewoman who hosted The Great Tew Circle, a group of theologians and poets who discussed controversial ideas with her husband Lucius, the 2nd Viscount Falkland.

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