In open sheep country we crested a rise
to find in a fold in the dales
all the sheep penned by fencing,
a mass of face-flecked white.
At the centre a small pen crowded
with grey-clad shepherds in caps,
grazing on sandwiches and flasks.
On our way to the Lakes we stopped
At a shop with café attached,
Isolated by a road through the woods.
It was there over tea and a teacake
That I read the proprietor's fly papers:
Full of nothing but obituaries.
Where once stood dark satanic mills
We've built our shopping malls,
Where we can buy our mobile phones
And book our summer hols.
Our favourite food, once fish and chips,
Is chicken tikka now.
We like our pizzas, burgers too.
We like food fast—and how.
We have a green and pleasant land.
We think it's not so bad.
It may not be Jerusalem—
At least it's not Baghdad.
Soon clear of the city,
heading towards pale afternoon sun,
after the rain, maybe a distant storm
lurks beyond that gentle sage-blue rise of land.
A car approaches on the open road,
passes,
is gone.
Another slope, the sun's rays bouncing from the crest,
leaving in shadow the rectangles
cut one spade spit deep, into the soft yielding hillside.
A stack of peat bricks awaits collection.
Beyond a stand of trees a perfect cone,
the Sugarloaf, and here a terrace,
walkways, planting and a house,
burned out, shrubs firmly rooted
where bedroom fires once were laid
by country girls in caps and pinafores,
whose daughters now work in McDonalds
in Grafton Street.
One afternoon of heat we walked
across the tarmac from the plane.
A man in uniform waved a lazy arm
towards a stand of palm trees
and a wooden wicket gate. As if
into a garden we were passing.
Above the path a length of bamboo matting
tied to a frame of concrete reinforcing rods
failed to provide shade, just as inside
the stuccoed building the open doors
failed to circulate the laden air,
a heady blend of pines, of earth,
of dark tobacco, air travel and the sun.
We sat upon a boulder, wind-worn smooth and table-flat,
too big to be re-positioned. So the old track ran round
the rock—a detour—rutted, dusty, hard and pebble-strewn.
We had walked that road, leaving the siesta town below,
climbing from empty bars and topless beaches, between walls
crumbling around small plots of land, ancient tiled aquifers,
dry as bones, lining the ridges, past lemon groves with goats
tethered within reach of shade but not of fruit or tree-bark.
And I in sandals—the soles worn thin on crumbling rock trails—
frayed jeans, white Indian shirt (for the heat) and the famous hat,
the hat of peasant straw, as might have been worn by donkeys.
From where we sat we heard a distant bleating, bearded goat
with an ancient message, half a dozen parched fields below.
At our feet a gecko darted. And at our backs a tree,
a carob, stirred only the once in barely moving air,
long pods near black, hung heavy along grey-dusted branches.
We owned this terracotta world. Time did not intrude here,
had not marked passing centuries. Not even civil war,
the rounding up of the men in the hilltop fortress church,
the long uneasy peace, had marked this hillside where we sat.
At the end of the runway sits a vivid orange disc
Like the portal of a furnace in the sky.
All around the atmosphere is stained a livid red
As we wait to come unstuck, to quote the French.
Towards a blue-white lattice formed of con trails,
The plane climbs up to cruising height
To give the sun a second chance to rise again
And then a blazing second chance for it to set.
© David Fisher 1962-2019