let us begin
high in the high moor . . .
with a fine mist blowing
across the incline
of the curlew’s wings
let us begin
to drink in
the umber
of the slumbering haystacks,
green and brown,
mildewed and
mouldering;
to frighten the hungry
scampering rock
in the sleeping cock-crow
as it climbs
and ricochets
off chicken trays
to pig troughs:
snufflers in mufflers
for the grey is cold
as dawn is scorned
by the village clock
and the dull velveted
drumsticks heave over
clicking ratchets . . .
and whirr . . .
like a spoon stirring soup
stirring the down
in the alarm-clock
hamlet awake.
and the third cock crows.
there is a scurrying
of tiny feet, fleet
before the running shadow,
flicking every blade,
twisting like a golden arm
through blocking lattice
spiderwork; weaving and
interweaving lemon shadows
on the green lime trunks,
to the tumbling masonry
of the god built earth,
giving heat and
light and moist
air rises from the
boles to the lattice
to the ribbon sky.
Lumbering, the
badger, like a
giant hedge-pig
swims along in
the glittering grass,
his carefully
combed crested
white refracting
the sparkling energy
in the early morn,
and with a dawn-defiant
grunt rolls his
rocking body
down his rumbling tunnel
to sleep in his
laundered haystack.
we
have begun,
and the pendulum
has longswung by,
the trees no longer
lemon, the lime trunks
black with winter
no longer, their
pointing fingers
accusing the night sky,
fingers of howtruth,
hightruth, keeping
their tryst with the moon
again the shut
is down, the blackness
that flits from dimmity
to dimmity,
in a dell of closecut,
where lightladders
clamber down
so seldom, so
seldom does the
being ruck
this faery enchant,
and the stool circles
be trampled,
pan pipes in the twilight,
flutelike in the predawn:
the cries that ring so clear
are the chorus
of the dawn
once again
we hear the morn
soar into the sky,
see the clatter
and rattle of
metal milkchurns
as they millstone
down the valley
but the sound
and the sight
is not warm
to the touch:
there is that
allominous
crispness of
the afterfall,
that halfecho
which swells and
abruptly ceases,
and tells of
the white rain,
of the cold, and the
slumbering
up on the hill
side the tents glisten
white and green,
the grass is dew
and the ponderous
eyed cows look up
as a lone figure
rises, angled against
the blueness of
the dawn, black
yet clean in the
soak of the sunlit
valley
over the shining gossamer, the
scintillate grass,
down the longfield
sloping tranquil
to the river,
and dancing through
the crawling alders
like a jack o’lantern
see the
mist rising and
billowing from
the priestholes, with
dewsodden grassfronds
falling in its wake,
stammer across the
endless belt of
iron mirage left
like pools on ballast,
up towards the
distant blue mountains,
dimly bleak but
tranquil in the
fragrance of
the new sun –
and back,
where, curling, a
pillar climbs sky
ward from a brecon
chimneystack, above
a splash of mauve,
a cottage roof
welcoming the
saturate sunrise
there is
the down
to the
station, lake,
a long glimmer
of steel
like lead –
there is,
round, a
farm hugs
the dip
sweep over
of grass
by the chewing
cows short
and the
daybreak,
a thin slice of
black, passes
across the sun,
cool quivering
with heat,
penetrating
slowly through
the dewfall
barrier of –
of the water as
it gushes from the
pipe,
shone and
cut,
the yew trees
high
and red,
on the needle
a soft
tread
tread,
following
old brock
up the
hillside
the cleft
shows
green after
dew, and
the paths
grass
and water
wire rusted the
bracken paving
a tract
desolate
(a single
chord rises
whereupon
the rivercrow
flaps
gaunt;
the persistent
knock of
boats to the
lap on
the bank,
a scuffling
of rats
from inside,
wind through the trees, a
note and
like a house
the creaking
of boards
crossing
the topsy
turvy
trent
comes the
quak
of a waterhen)
lost there
the twisted
oaks form
a sargasso,
wrecks
fret, ripped,
gone
autumn morn
floats out
above the
skyline,
just
the fragrance,
all,
not streaming,
all,
a stillness –
all
Comentarios