“All that I could lose
I lost. And then the child’s voice raised the dead”.
I am no stalking devotee
who haunts the houses of the great
or watches from the shy side-lines
for a poet’s ghost of such import
And yet I’ve been to Adlestrop1
but not by train, the station’s gone
only the platform name remains
of which you made phenomenon
How quiet there except for birds
that sang the counties near and far
and still it is in Gloucestershire
foot stepping through your repertoire
Reciting those fine words again
that first my childlike ears had heard
I raise you from an Arras field2
and make believe you disappeared
- see the poem Adlestrop ↩︎
- killed in the battle of Arras, when Edward Thomas’ first book of poems was going to press ↩︎
For Open Link Night @dVerse where Lillian is host and anything goes. Just a simple poem for Edward Thomas (1878-1917) and his colloquial style of poetry. Epigraph from his poem The Brook.
PoetryPix 