Paul HADFIELD

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Returning To Hadrian's Wall

</></>At the thought's end
The eye, tracing your lineage, falters
Yet Nature is immune tto imperfection
Words, cararacts
Above the torrent at High Force. Lacunae?
Clear sky at day-end.

I found you out
In the fret of a lost empire
'You made appointments in this decay? '
Phantoms skelter in the broken ditch
Caught up in the bright whins

Negotiating contours
Hardly bound to summon up
What once was surely made of them.

January Two thousand and twelve
Again the slow limbs stir
Provocation after a year fallow,

Grasping for words to modulate
Between satiety and apprehension
Yet a taut countenance, benign, life-hungry
Re-working the harmonics
Of the day to come

Remains; this last cottage
Too lately lost: footings grazed over
Time-levelled tumuli, too soon displaced
Small raptures in the mindscape.
Who should not find this settled turmoil
More accomodating than declension?

* * *

Freedom for the artisan?

A sense of occasion

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