The country walk

THESE fields, though tractor-ploughed, are yet the same
as seen by Cowper, all unchanged the elms
and the stiff interweave and plait of hedging:
these twisting lanes though tarred would not surprise
genial short-sighted Trollope riding to hounds
in a lost surer England.

But our idiom

is changed—more than the tractor or the tarmac,
changed as the motor-cycle couple roaring
past, seeking main roads and the neon cinema.
So altered now the grammar of our verse
we can no longer unself-consciously
write of the country without the wry reproach
of being outdated Georgians, poor escapists,
cloud-cuckoo-landers, recluses in secret towers out of all human contact.

We are told to turn

to a new world, to go along the bus-route
past the Co-op with its queues of strained, dull faces,
and Maison Pompadour (where you get a hair-do,
really you do, Doris, just like Betty Grable)
on to the Civic Centre—and past, for here is nothing
oh, nothing at the centre
but offices and cinemas and a parking place,
so on again to the other side of the town
to unadopted roads and mock-Tudor villas
where the speculative builder eats the countryside.

This is tired, frightened England
this is our land
empty, yet crowded: a people unsure and rootless
without a past and shifting awkwardly in the present,
nor daring to think of a future—these are they
who having come out of great tribulation
and told they inherit the land, may sometimes believe this
but find it increase for their agony.
And can one write for these? True we both have
the basic human needs of house and hearth
with food and drink to share with friends around it,
and only hope that we shall not be robbed
or pillaged before daybreak—these we shared
millennia ago, but since those days
we have surely trod on such divergent roads
that neolithic bonds of common feeling
can hardly serve as intimate links to join
poet and reader: now we talk two tongues
and are quite strangers.

No hope with these to strike a kindred spark—
but yet this walk under the full-leafed trees
gives reassurance that I still can claim
some tie, however imagined, with my own land.

Here history holds insistent
the country to the people, links
the Darts Team list of names in pubs
to those on lichened tombstones, binds
the near thing to the distant.

No stranger here discovers
the tricks of crops in Starveall Furlong
nor knows the names of Saxon bookland
used by ploughmen in phrase obscure as
overheard talk of lovers.

Even if now neglected
except by faded spinsters at
the service, or visiting antiquaries,
the village church to industry
is not yet directed.

Still not here so shallow
life as in the by-pass bungalow,
roots here strike more deeply, and
a man may hope to see in his days
more than weeds and fallow.

III

Life comes to terms with death in the country churchyard
where children play hide-and-seek about the slabs
grotesque with puff-cheeked cherubs, bat-winged skulls
time’s sharp inexorable scythe and the dwindled hour-glass.
The tombed dead too are still parishioners,
their pew-rent paid to Charon, so that they look
from periwigged bust, or stiff-ruffed under pediments,
with calm approval at the latest christening.
Death is no more than the act of history
sharpened to knife-edge, so that a knot is cut
and in the severance stronger links are forged
from past to present.

Here and everywhere

where roots are struck in soil, and nourishment
for present comes from the fertilising past,
there is no battle of the quick and the dead
but both combine in richness and new strength,
and not unwelcome
the salutary warning of decay
time's mutability, and all things' aid.

Emblems of change and disasters
the stars are falling:
gilt paper stars from a painted ceiling—
outside the rooks are calling
as the wet leaves drift on the sill
of a door rarely opened—
here's a mad world, my masters.

Stars in a quincunx between flecked clouds
in faded blue skies:
Arcadian heavens to vault-roofed box pews
echo a ghost's tired sighs
in lost Jacobean formal splendour
now dry-rotted, cobweb hung
in a dusty reminder of shrouds.

A proud private world this wooden room
now unfrequented, crumbling:
so our little worlds built so cunningly
break, our poor pride humbling—
there's no escape to contrived blue heavens
our brightest star is but gilded,
always we fashion a tomb.

So in the country I am still at home:
here still there seems some continuity
some things that I can share: the time and place
become articulate in convergence, here
I can identify myself with past and present.
make terms with life through death; at the intersection
of time’s perspective, seek a vanishing point
on an horizon which is never reached
but sometimes lies before, sometimes behind or may be at my feet.

It is not easy

this coming to terms, this personal definition,
not easy for oneself. And to guide the others
oh, so much harder, but there is something of death,
which is also life: there is present which is really past
and hope which knows there is no ultimate hope,
but only vanity, and the consolation of humbleness.

27 October 1945