This is my vision of a certain cast of English village (not so much in springtime).

Winter Town

 

March winds stir listless eddies,

fluke in tired gusts over thin pools,

flare through fields of stubble

then flag, exhausted, sour and wheezing

from the blowing day;

coughing, rubbing arthritic fingers,

cold as a church bell sounds the hours.

 

Spring will be late this year; no flowers yet

but Atlantic storms that clatter lychgates

accepting deliveries of frozen souls

for vicars to inter on high,

between rolling thunder and fists of sand

flung on coffin lids, the mourners know not why.

 

And the people will cry, will try

to understand a moment cast in stone,

to roam a land of memories,

of ways of talking, laughing inside,

almost faded from a pallet

of simple colours, now mere monochrome.

 

I cannot say what fills the black hearts

of those who would hurt me,

a man grown to be a child: they leave me

singing.

 

And the town, new in green,

wakes to sun-filled morning;

its streets in shadow,

its life lived behind open doors.

 

Chris Hubbard

Chinon, France

2016