St Rumon's Space (Redruth)

It looks like a bombed out place, this quiet vacancy

in an unfashionable town.

To one side, over the walls, traffic drones,

and on the other a footway where you wouldn't want

to walk at night time.

Where this small green treasure remains,

overcrowded by jealous walls,

a cinema stood until some decades ago.

Charlie Chaplin shadows peer out

of the cracked angles in the sun.

Further back than that, this garden

was a chapel, though unholy this Sunday

where the dog roses bloom,

and no shade of chapel or hymn

discolours the space.

The sad eyes mural of an industrialist

watches the strolling peace seeker

instead of the imageless saint,

whose priests still dutifully tread

in an under echo beneath the sad grass,

and the roofless walls where praise

should still be written,

ghost marked by the ascent

of the picture house stairs

going up to heaven.