Written upon learning that Tennyson’s Locksley Hall (or its successor, Loxley), is now “occupied by a Staffordshire County Council special school for boys with learning difficulties.”

As you cease to babble, man, about my forehead and my cheek,
Once my ear finds surcease from the wordy cataract you speak,

Then I turn my thought to the future; I peer far as an eye can see,
And I trace successive branches of our august family tree.

With each generation, daughters appear less bound to duty,
Wriggling free of what you'd call their debt to men--their beauty.

I watch the public purse fill with funds for a war on poverty.
The revenue, from taxes on this very kind of property.

Loxley Hall, a council school for teenagers with special needs.
That is the vision, cousin, I descry once your voice recedes.

Locksley! our fruitful land, our ivied walls, our portion of the shore,
Where curlews cry and moorlands meet the hollowed ocean's roar.

My vision conjures the final squire, possessions in his boot.
A receipt for his old feudal seat has made his tax bill moot.

An administrator takes his place, perhaps a she or a them,
Born in the eastern lands, I imagine, whence you say you come.

Not in vain does the future beckon us; onward must we move.
The great world spins forever and it's our burden to improve.

Answering “Locksley Hall,” although Tennyson may also disparage his narrator. See also: three endings for Christabel; “For Gerard Manley Hopkins“

The decrepit T lurches into motion,
Its doors having taken--each--a full bite
Of the human mass that pushes through the tubes
Of Downtown Crossing. Damp, tense, tired, late,
The crowd flows under Tremont Street: so many!

I'm sitting on my buttoned wallet pocket,
Clutching the laptop hidden in my bag.
We fix our eyes on our own pairs of feet
Or on screens that, down here, cannot connect.

After Park (without an r), the pace picks up.
I remember to close my eyes. On each side,
An anonymous shoulder presses mine.
The only sound: that familiar patter
Of wheels' steel on track: tha-thump, thumpy-clack.
It’s been in my ears since cigarette smoke 
Still billowed in trains and settled on seats.

It brings to mind that turbid ebb and flow
That Arnold heard as human misery.
Maybe, but it's one pulse for all of us.
As we clatter over the rain-lashed river,
The breath of all the invisibles who ride
With me merges and thickens into one. 

See also: sighs, short and frequent, were exhaled; Martha’s Vineyard, August 2009; Robert Lowell at the Indian Killer’s Grave