Even Here


Even here, the river of noise can be heard:
Even here aside the copse atop the hill
A thousand feet above the road, two miles distant,
Whose vehicles carry their captive beings rushing
To another journey.

From here, the Marches hills - snow covered -
Quietly wait while all kinds of being
Pass, cover, crawl upon, despoil, enrich their soil:
Knowing as such hills do through their rearing, breathing silence
The passing that is every being's death.
So they wait, wordlessly waiting,
Breathing

While high in the pure, bright blue above
Sleek machines of silver streak the sky
But briefly, with white:
I cannot hear them as they, that way, then back,
Carry their captive beings rushing
To another journey.
Even here, the river of noise is heard
So I move to rest among this Winter's trees
Where the cold hill air, moving, moves
Their few dried, dead, brown-clinging leaves,
Scratchily rustling where branches creek, singing
Amid the squawking
Of crows:

So there is a mask, here, to mask such traffic noise,
A tree space where warming sun bears down
As I - dead branch for pillow - lie among an Autumn's gold
While sun warmth warms my hands, my face:
And so I hear the quiet dream of hills
Who, wordless, waited,
While roads came:
Their breathing a connection to another machine-less Space.
 
 

DW Myatt