Drains Poem by Roy Ballard

Let's sing the muted music of the drains,
drains closely hidden in the wormy earth.
Only a whispered gurgling betrays
the laden surges in their secret ways
that carry off some dinner's last remains
to Thames or Channel or the Forth of Firth.

And yet consider how in fair-faced brick
some bricky, not so fair of face himself,
beneath ground level built a vaulted arch,
its Roman segments trowelled with a flick,
a cavern fit for leprechaun or elf,
sunk from the sun and from the winds of March.

They much surpass the craftsman in their worth
think villa folk but when the ground is shrinking
and when the drains he laid with toil and care
now leak along their length or round their girth,
like some crushed snake, to leave their boudoirs stinking;
if he forsakes them then? O what despair!