I
Widescreen, to Gone with the Wind themes, the Spaldwick road
Slow-pans you towards forgotten footage...You spot the odd barn;
A token hawthorn butt; and countless anonymous farm-tracks--
But the tracks are too straight; harder than they need be.Each barn, as you make your approach, becomes a corrugated hut.
The road unreels its title sequence but your senses are enmeshed
By the foulness of Brussels, silage, or is it that dead hare
You swerved to avoid? You do not expect to find living things out here.
No house for miles, and apart from the bird-scarers, bird-noise
Would be the only sound if you were to wind down the glass:
peewits' Low-level, high-volume aerobatics; or the viffing of skylarks--
Like two half-witted, crack-voiced veterans of the old hundred:
Make a joyful noise unto the Lord of Air-space! And so it fell
That half a century ago Dwight Eisenhower sowed the bulldog's teeth.
But there was no Golden Fleece; only, somewhere over the rainbow,
The Rhein ablaze...Now, occasionally, in the summer, a coachload
Of balding shades will pause on its way from the Madingley graves to hear
That this is the village where Clark Gable's suits were tailored
And none will be told the uncanny tale that the village keeps and
Does not advertise; the local man who was up and out early jogging
The broken runways: who saw what he saw, which is said to have been--
But secrets are what the Spaldwick road keeps best: the mist
Encloses them more surely than the perimeter wire seals Molesworth's lips.
Unnumbered aircrew must have left from here. Some perhaps returned.
II
On the main road I follow to work, there is a noise like wax
In the ears. You can hear it most clearly on a Sunday, when no
Juggernauts are heading for their container shrine; but in winter
It swells the rush-hour; and on a Spring night it will make lovers
Stir in their dark lay-by. I have visited the weirs at Offord Cluny
On a flood morning, and stood on the sluice-gates, and been
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