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by Adrian Done
A short walk to their planting from Love Lane
and turning the soil over compost rot
and soon the sounds of spade and tap and voice
reach those who tend a different plot
intent on their silent work before
the fresh earth, familiar words and fervent
flowers stark and defiant that disturb
the land newly ordained for settlement;
a long low time-worn building stands nearby
its small windows look upon the mown field
past the restless boundary trees to where lie
the generations in sunken earth;
like a forgotten city its untrue
stones and roofs, raw walls and columns resign
to the green dominion, the eager roots
of perennial life and creeping time;
looking back towards the renovated
poorhouse dwelling beneath grey and silver
clouds I recall one whose days ended there;
at my feet the grass thickening over
the small shared allotment, its borders lost,
where rest those who followed, and retrace
the line from then to now and turn away
to go beyond this crumpled inert place
to cultivate and create what will yield
a connection, remake the union;
and a bird sings in a more distant field
as will the first wheatear on a drift of snow
Wary of the camera's aim
he stands for his wedding picture,
an arm rests on the studio
pedestal, a painted rural
backcloth, and deference deterred
apart, she sits calm and poised, holds
her flowers that trail down over
the arranged folds of the full dress,
floral hat and broad white collar
lace, ribbon, and beauty composed
we seek to arouse old pictures,
awaken their distant stone-still
monochrome silence, cause gloved hands
to ease and eyes to speak, tranquil
flowers to yield their scent once more
likewise restless, all the King's men
young and eager, of the wrong age,
leave the village flag-proud, spring-heeled
for painful fields of wild outrage,
desolation, red remembered
builders, stone masons, quarrymen
knowing the pinch bars cramp, their place
chill exclusion's old rotting wall;
knowing the force and interface
of pick and wedge and gravity
but not the cold calculation,
the applied science of artillery,
that the floor, rock solid beneath
boots and iron clogs, can give way
to fall into oblivion
it seems a narrow anchored world,
in order, unjoined and unwrought,
like the sallow quarried free-stone
stacked for slow regular transport
down the road to Yorton Station
out of school he heard them run free
on the summer hill of childhood
of bilberry and fern and fir
seeking new ways through the green wood
or caught the sounds of the stone school
when the battle ceased of iron
and rock surrendering, giving
ground, to quarry the rough-hewn blocks,
right-dressed, married and enduring
for corner, key and coping stone
desk bound they felt the muffled thud,
like a distant gun, of bridled
detonations, controlled release
of constructive force, the flying
colours: ruby, primrose smokeless
red star, emerald, green India
of fuse and cartridge powder,
to split apart the steadfast rock
break the old grip and sunder,
found alliance of bridge and arch
and answer the approaching need
for named crosses, monumental,
and head stones, laid in ordered line
on green white fields, impeccable
as tiled floors or a dress parade;
a thin aspiring ash lightly
shadows the watercoloured face,
saplings grow in gaps and ledges,
moss and stonecrop green the rock base
of the sheer walls cut over years
apprehensive men stood watching
the lifted heavy stone passing
the iron ladder fixed for youth
to carry tools for sharpening,
hot-tempered in forge and furnace
and now a silent worked-out spot,
abandoned tracks by fields of wheat,
and yet in the deepest unreached
corner it seems the sun lost heat
and died, where they went too far
the walk home for child and father
down the worn glat of bare sandstone
passes the high upreaching church,
the vigilant weather vane unknown
to the fearful wind, shifting round
its memorial brass as yet unfixed
and unengraved the final list,
broken bonds, no wedding picture,
brief marks on the layered stonework
of time and loss and departure
the summit stone is carved with names,
emblems of hope or love's despair,
by those who climbed to see, and look
across the shining plain to where
the southern spires of Shrewsbury gleam
still noonday fields and farm, sun-hazed
trees stand in pools of shade; beneath
the leafy slopes, warm garden plots
and lanes of Grinshill, Sansaw Heath,
and the long line of far blue hills
no shells shattered the small lone hill,
no fields ploughed by ruthless armour,
on other plains an escarpment,
salient vantage battled for;
or made another Oradour
they died at the war's end
when the dark laden tide returned
and did not see what man can do
in a century whose centre burned,
wrenched apart, downfallen, undone
by the raw dead reckoning of hate;
better to see what man can do
to work in stone accord and love,
to connect, uphold, continue
no matter what the skies above
as life adapts and summer turns
with the sandpiper's rhythmic call
and rooks wheel round the leafless trees,
and the curlew's long liquid trill
bubbles still over far off fields
Clear and fresh as though newly sprung
the brook with an inland murmur
joins the river at the small bridge
rounds the field green and familiar
and reflects the quiet of the sky
leaving behind the shining brook,
its rippling dash spent in shadows
dark and rich of time worn arches,
the river enlivened follows
its course to the tall chimney down
between the livelong banks and turns
at the mill, falls from the shallow
weir's shimmering rim and single
mindedly continues its slow
long and inveterate descent;
here once blocked by the mill, it spread
and deepened, stormed in the tunnels,
but diverted flow and level
mattered little and it sidles
by barely affecting the town
passing unheeded; and the brook
to the side that took the overspill
now unused sank low, overgrown,
still and dark beneath the trees, until
the cold obstruction of the dam
restored the fall and noise of water,
plants green and gold lighten dungeon
walls, ivy, fern, moss and lichen,
and the brook runs on to union
with the river beyond the mill
Page created 1 November 2004 and last
updated 1 November 2004
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