Len Webster's 'Muchloved' Poem by Len Webster

The town of Muchloved is no-man's town.
It lies robust within forgotten dreams
over sandstone lost to past seas.
Split asunder, it left holes in shadows,
memories of salt-water dried in crevices,
running free over old crock pipes.
Children played on slag heaps
thrusting darkness onto wondergreen
overlying all.
Cloth-capped workmen, my smithy-grandfather, too,
walked to work on dusty roads
feet firm in horse-tracks.
We in Muchloved have lost all this -
we have progressed
and now live on concrete,
pure and white.



(First published in the author's collection
'Behind the Painted Veil', Outposts Publications,
Walton-on-Thames, Surrey,1972, page 12)