Listen:
Listen to the silent ones, the ghosts before and after.
They chatter in the trees, press down the earth to ease
Your path; and after, brush away your memory
With wind, then wash away with rain what remains.
These trees were once a hedge,
This hollow way was level,
And the sky was full of song,
The woods of deer and foxes.
And they are here, now, all those
Who changed it, step by step
Plan by plan, dream by dream.
Listen:
IN ANY ORDER
(1)
Rose, her thoughts hurrying ahead of her
Down the lane to home; the fire is banked against the coming snow
And she will show her John two halfpennies from market
And he will love her more, and buy eggs, and Meg will stop her crying
Once Rose has eaten and her milk comes in again.
IN ANY ORDER
(2)
Rani and Fliss, thirty years now gone,
Hill-striders in synthetic coats,
Their love a burning secret, soon to be ashes though they don’t yet know;
They climb the hollow way between the trees, emerge into
Grey and brilliant light chasing clouds across the sky.
IN ANY ORDER
(3)
Wulfstan: his hunt complete, two rabbits on his belt,
Pondering the meaning of the sinking sun;
What hidden gods tread secret paths through the dark below the world
Towards the dawn or rising in the yew tree’s bitter sap?
IN ANY ORDER
(4)
A woman, a child, a man, too old for names, their plans half-formed;
Their wise eyes, brown with knowing,
Pierce the horizon; they listen for the heartbeat of the hills,
The softening of sound that leads to safety,
A whisper of an ancient far hot plain.
THEN
Listen –
And you hear the click of stones
Beneath the ragged feet of he or she who came here first,
This world’s first ghost, their thoughts long buried in the grass.
No lane brought them here, they see trees and sky and deer
Whose tracks perhaps they followed from a stilted lakeside hut.
The land they tread stands ready to be shaped,
One ghost at a time, each footstep another word in the story
You are writing now as you turn,
As you listen. Listen closer:
You hear yourself amongst the ghosts,
The soft beat of your thoughts muffled by trees
That one day will be gone, echoed between rocks that wear away
Even as you look, atom by atom, flake by flake.
And who will hear you when these altars
To your memory are gone? When your ghost
Strides paths that are no longer here, and mutters
Words that time and storm and sun
Have stripped to voiceless bones?
Your shape is pressed into the earth.
Your voice is printed on the wind.
Listen: you are the murmur of the leaves,
A sigh in the rain’s slow dream;
And ghosts will fold around them,
Closer, closer now, and whisper
Listen; listen and you will hear.
Quantock Poetry Trail 