High Agra

Along a forest track,

Beside a lichen birch

And through a gate.

Such a simple sequence of moves

Sketched on the skin

Of an autumn evening.

Here the old path runs into a wall

And disappears in search of a distant abbey.

Here the hollows in the field twist the imagination

Into a Celtic knot of mixed tenses.

When was this long ago ?

And was it different for the falling down farmhouse,

The reek of empty barns

And the crumbling cattle stalls ?

Something is here from

Long ago or

Long, long ago

And its fragile figure brushes our minds

And fades with the mauve sky sun.