I’ve been meaning to add this to this thread for a while:
Revisiting Fairwarp
Remember the soft wind and the distant voices
Riding the moist air of Spring over the harrowed fields
In March, and the horses, three of them, gamboling.
The first chiff-chaffs teetered in the thornbush, timidly
Anticipating the April sun and the first dried bents,
The advent of insects. Even in the cool late-Winter evening
Above the cold cabbage-patch the gnats would swarm
Finding a warm pocket or column of rising air.
It was there we would heel in the new young plants
Holding the damp soil with a blunt dibber. Thick cakes of mud
Like parathas clung to our boots, and we killed each wireworm singly,
If the clodhopping robin didn’t pick it off first. The blackbird
Angelically sang in the bare apple-tree opening his orange bill
In the watery air, or chased his heavy ladies on the lawn.
The woods nearby were waterlogged still, the old cart-tracks impassable
Where the charcoal-burners gathered the cordwood, and once
Long ago the green glades rang with the noise of forges.
Now they are still but for the bulky doves stuffed full of green
And grain, puffing and blowing like bellows, in the bare branches.
Here the quarrelsome jay screams at every event
And the exotic pheasant from time to time blares unseen
In the bottoms. The bright-painted woodpecker yells,
And the long-tailed tit gently warns of marauders.
It was dark by six and you used to make tea and crumpets
While I cleaned off the spade in the garage.
The house was still in the evening, and we never thought,
Sitting quietly there by the splitting logs and the dog that dreamed,
Of that unknown land of tears, and its mystery
Only a few sodden acres away.
--Peter Russell (London, 1963)
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