Mary Hobson

Summer in Zaraisk or Who wrote Shakespeare?

  For Marina, with love

Zaraisk is green.
I mean,
not just politically correct,
but green, unchecked,
in glorious profusion and neglect.
Here raspberries and nettles grow together,
and mischievous young devils
play out Shakespeare’s midsummer revels
in summer weather.
Here Dima’s sunflowers grow like weeds –
his parrot eats the seeds –
and here Marina reads
John Donne,
in search of further proof
that Rutland was the one,
and apples fall like thunder on the roof.