Russell Square

Did Virginia Woolf pause

among the gardens

on her way to the lighthouse?

Did Thackeray walk silently

and consider vanity? And

did Eliot stroll across the paths,

resting in the green grass

of the waste land? And if you

sat on a bench that July

could you hear the bombing?

So intent was I to reach

Shakespeare Staging the World

at the museum that I almost

missed the exhibit of pigeons

bathing in the fountain.

Russell Square is one of the squares in the Bloomsbury section of London, a longish block from the British Museum. The Russell Square tube station was where the underground train was headed from King’s Cross station in July, 2005, when it was bombed by terrorists.

Photograph: Russell Square fountain, via Number One London.