Since Queen Victoria,
polo fields turfed the Dorpspruit floodplain
like an ample cricket ground
from Saddlery to Brickyard and Bird Sanctuary,
but city planners’
paths of development
rezoned this irenic plover park as “prime”
The polo people charged a run of discontent,
interested and affected parties
bated city sentiment
without
the second sight of Noah
yet still the outcome read that
players, horses, heritage
and the leafy common
would be here to stay!
Until one morning SUV or tractor tracks
cut deep
one hundred urban years
in polo sediment
The polo folk just moved away
to a higher private space
in walled and gated
ivory
and weekly markets, meets and nearly all the birds but egrets,
umbrellas, horses, bales and hot-ice boxes
left the fields, replaced
by mounds of blackjacks, khakhibos and rotting refuse,
but garnishing
the new and Northbound boulevard
steel and glass and gleaming sales floors
concrete grass
Amafa referenced redbrick,
a lanky littoral zone
topped and tinned
with cyber cipher neon
flashing growth
and with no limits,
mantras promising
the Sleepy Hollow
Vibrant Valley
Makeover
Upgrade shouts a speedy sale of one day’s headlines
but be that as it may
these yeomen of the now
just plough and scatter once a life-time floodplains,
sprawl out pensions,
futures,
venture finance
hastily
but so much less
withstandably
than what remains
and weeds remember
of
the fields
Allen Goddard
