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In the Summer, Now it’s Evening

In the summer, now it’s evening,

take refuge in the graveyard.

Overhead the birds settling;

below them lines and shadows

where white walls hold the sunlight.

In the paths between the headstones

women with water-jars

from wellside to graveside, back and forth.

Church-door wide open.

Shafts of mote-dust

in the silent space.

But there’s one woman praying

in a bench that dwarfs her.

From the chapel garden comes

the sound of laughing: of girls surely.

One hangs out clothes, off-white

from long years of washing.

On tombs along the church wall

inscriptions worn off

by time’s working and the weather.

The lime tree’s balm falls

on the statue of St John

bent double by its years,

and blackened by the ages.

From the pub across the road

a man reels out. Behind him also

working-girls’ voices. You smell burning

from their hard waist-embraces.

The sun goes down

slowly. The shadows grow still longer.

The Evening’s Breeze is Mild

Evening breeze is mild.

Late light on the whitewashed wall.

Olive-groves give shading to the twilight,

colours soften to brown or dark gold-green.

The master is here already, with his followers

in the garden’s shade. Night comes.

Birds fall silent. The lights go out.

Night-sky deepens; sleep comes

at the end of this long day.

The wind gives a sudden shake

to the leaf-cover on the trees.

The sky plunges downwards.

Trees loom from the darkness.

The thorn hardens in the next wound.

Loneliness drops from the air.

Silence as punishment.

It’s no good darkness shrouding the voice.

Everything is asleep.

The bell twists the heart’s pain.

Nowhere, no-one, dear God.

In Grandfather’s farmyard

In grandfather’s farmyard. Music perches on the branches of the majestic

chestnut tree. Musicians too have their instruments at the ready, about to start a

song, but it's not yet quite time; the music still perches in the trees. The musicians,

one after another, climb to the treetop to reach the music. In the process one of

them damages his huge Saxhorn. It turns out that part of the instrument is

missing; strangely, I am holding the missing part in my hands. I throw it up to him in

the branches but it falls back down; it is battered by the branches and lands on the

ground, dented. But it is made of soft, pliable metal, so I repair it easily and throw it

back up into the branches. The musician catches it and fits it back between

the other two parts of the instrument. But the music still doesn't start. We are

waiting for something. This makes me anxious, and so does something else–

everything is a bit different here. In reality the majestic chestnut tree stands more in

the background, as far back as the shed, and there is no chestnut tree at that spot

any more. The stump of another chestnut (or of the same one?) is now in the place

where really the little wooden summerhouse should be, and so on. Then I get the

idea; I am afraid that we are waiting for the start of a funeral…but, to set against

those fears, there is that ease and relaxation in the attitudes of the musicians….

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