The Wreck on the A-222 in Ravensbourne Valley

There are more things to love than we would dare to hope for. —Richard of St. Victor where the car hit him, fireweed sprang with blazons of fennel and umbels of dill fell through the spokes of a wheel on Whistun holiday to the sun, Denton Welch spun a web in his crushed cycle, sat in the seat, spine curled up like a spider— and spied: “saw the very drops of sweat glittering frostily between the shoulder blades” of a lad …on and on he spied and bled from the blades of his cycle, small as a spider, hiding in the fireweed, getting wet from the skins of many human suns aground at the Kentish river near Tunbridge Wells, where the dill lulls, and all boys spoil…