EQUITABLE LIFE

Oh, Henry, what an equitable life!
Now tell me, what is safer than a house?
Why, houses, boy: it's quantity that counts.
Though one huge home would do - Palladian, parked
in thousand-acre Brown-scaped rolling land.
An avenue of chestnuts climbs from lodge
to portico past man-made lakes and woods
where pheasants aspirate and peacocks scream
by Gothic follies and Hellenic domes.
Your house is redolent of wealth: we smell
old money in the linenfolded oak
and portraits of dead Henrys in stiff ruffs,
their bearing starched, their smileless eyes assured.
You issue forth loose-jointed down grey steps;
behind, your Father in an unpressed tweed,
his eyes gilt-edged and kindly, shooting stick
in hand. He pauses at a granite urn
with summer's dying rose, his fingers scratched
by stone. Through leaves as crisp as new bank notes
you run towards the trees and grab the nut.
Its green case gapes; the lustrous conker gleams.
It is a pearl of chestnuts: it will crack
whatever Bill the butler's son might find.
But Father is beside you crackling leaves:
'Balsamic vinegar, my boy, and then
the microwave. That surely will fox Bill!
Oh, Henry, what an equitable life!'

Oh, Henry, what an equitable life!
Tonight your father's helicopter lands
you at Brands Hatch. His Maserati rips
your eardrums, and his driver grins and shoves
a helmet on your ruffled head. You like
this champagne-junky; speed is swallowing him;
he swallows speed; he's perfect in chicanes,
but for the chestnut avenue quite wrong.
A smeared mechanic grapples with the drum,
adjusting shoes and on his hunkers bent,
his limbs outstretched. And, as you look, a wheel
rolls out of nowhere, wobbles, hesitates,
anticipating agony; the tyre
connects; your frown becomes a smile
as you remember cracking other nuts
beneath the chestnut's outspread limbs.
The smile bursts like a sun above the hills,
a smile that's bred directly from those men
in ruffs that stare with such self-confidence
from heavy gilded frames, your lineage
behind their cloudy varnished veil, amazed
at their own dignity. And it was they
who planted Turkish chestnuts in a sweep
from lodge to portico, for in high June
their candelabras lit the sculpted fields.
Oh, Henry, what an equitable life!