Perhaps it is the attentiveness of stars
in unmarred dark - a brilliant, silent throng -
which makes voice echo through such open air...
Immersed in it: like first-taste from a well
- air that you drink slow for very freshness.
But in the cottage, lingers sediment:
pepp'ry coal, sweet woodsmoke, algid stone.
Walls of rock warp, painted linen-cream,
an oaken-ribbed white ceiling nestles low.
Tapestried, the couch for reveries
and plush old armchairs welcome weary guests,
gathering them before - a fireplace;
the small, cold, empty cavern - ashen, dead.
But watch the skill of labour-roughened hands,
master that enigma of Man's birth:
flames that bud and sprout, totter and cheer
our glowing eyes, flickering to peaceful warmth
and fascination in their mutant forms,
destruction slow and glamour consumate.
*
Roosteral crowing filters through my dream:
red-gold trumpets blown by heralds green.
I wake to smoky, lemon light of dawn
and drift again; until a hail and bark,
the booted footfall of a man below.
Shepherd? his collie slinking eagerly
to conquest tactical of swaledale sheep:
the ebon faced, in ivory wool coats,
black-stockinged neatness, head-high poise
- until approached - at which they trot away
with just a touch too much alarm for elegance.
Sit, knees to chin, within the two-foot wall
a velvet-cushioned fortress window-seat.
Peer down upon the gritstone village taupe -
bright flowers in nooks, like button-holes on suits,
seem to dress its quiet for celebration.
The sky always feels washed here; is it rain
or unurbanised air just stays so clean?
Right now a flexing surge of dappled clouds
rear on the horizon. Through the Dales
rampant herds of them go roaming wild,
parade across the sunlit plains of air -
wind swerving gustily, and light with shadow
flared and scrolled and mingled by their charge
as thoughts and feelings tangle here below
*
Out then! to taste the breath of wind and farm:
meadow blossoms tinctured in the sun,
cow dung, grasses crisping into straw,
bluff mountain gasps and min'raled river spray;
to stride the flag path of the seven fields;
peer into hungry barns, waiting their fill;
savour a rainbow subtly sprinkled through
the blooms and tassles of a fallow mede.
We hail the piebald cows who hang upon
backbones like rails, chewing soberly,
and raise large eyes, luxuriantly lashed,
inscrutable; but heavy ambling
towards us quickens subtly our pace
to border walls of interlocking stones
held only by mutual experience.
We squeeze through stiles, pause atop to view
how green, gold chequers line the vale,
how the river-distance vanishes
and farmland to the crouching mountain yields.
On rising slopes: leafed, wind-torted trees,
stony crannies, moss and ragged grass -
glimmering trickles quietly babble down,
join to rills and hurdle over rocks;
slide through strigose marsh into a beck -
called on, clearly called past the broad farm gate,
the hoof-churned mud-carpet of drinking beasts;
under foot-width bridges covert way
through hanging branches - leading those who know
to secrets of a public meadow path.
Pooling in basins where the children play;
down shallow shelves - glass curtains billowing
with ribbons of green weed; on, on
into the River; on into the Swale.
The Swale: sleek and swift, peaty and pure;
gold, black and brown as liquid tiger's-eye.
In drought, rippling tranquility lies low,
but drench it - then there springs a deeper rage
than ever you'd expect of one so small.
A traveller, murmuring dreamily,
tracing, lightly, whitely on dark skin
arabesques; and ruffling its foam
at every stone to wrestle; or in bays
where quiet curves aside, turning the spume
as on a wheel, mounting to toruses
opaline and wan, crystal antique
spinning slowly: phantasmal prayer wheels,
playthings of a jilted fairy queen.
Along the river's tireless wandering
time and again it leaps down a great drop
shouting as it falls and echoing
around an earthern auditorium,
tree-canopied; to pause in a great calm.
And there we swim beneath the rugged banks:
where liquid darkens in the hollowed depths
to sombreness: a cauldron rarely lit
with golden passing shadows of the sun.
Stones like giants' cobbles smoothly crush
tentative feet, numb and gilded now.
Plunge! Satin-like water strokes the skin
seductively; we float in a cold sky.
White light winks on waters' ringing dark:
like splint'rings fallen from the icy stars,
or flashes from an angered Kelpie's eyes.
We walk up-river, head toward the fells
and gorges where it took its birth and tone.
Full-skied, grim-boned, so glad and so austere
rocks lightly clad in turf, delicacy
of blossoms which are strong in stalk and root.
- Scarps break and retreat, into wide moors
of purple meditation, heathered clouds
rough-prickled and sublime; just listening -
to silence, or the wuthering in the air,
irenic ululations of a lark
risen to the heavens, which have dropped
their treasure in the mud - a round blue moon.
But down again, through dale we must return:
over the well-sprung, close-nibbled green;
past Philemon and Baucis in the flesh-
turned-bark, embracing in a homely bower,
their faces still writ large upon the trunks:
warts and all, elderly and kind.
The peace is softly pounded by our steps;
a solitary peewit's wailing cry;
rustling undergrowth; wandering humm;
rare meaningful, reproachful, nasal bleat
responding to ewe's juddering, mothering cry.
But watched by more than these - a peregrine
drifts overhead, and our ancestral home
is vibrant with keen senses we have shed.
We breathe and look, as though to fill again
our scar where natural peace has been torn out.
A yellow diamond cuts the dull grey clouds
rolling in splashes over its long rays;
the grass is dark grey-green and bright chartreuse
the thistles violet pompoms, purple flames:
Colours of conflict - colours of storm:
one glimpse of river all silver and slate,
then heads duck under whipping sheets of rain.
But soon the clouds have galloped on their way
beyond our vale and calm blithely returns.
Dippers skim along the lilting stream
flirting with both their elements, and blend
into the adumbrated mystery
where water-loving trees close in and hang
roots tapering in the cool. Fish
phantom through the depths.
I want to stay -
be part of natural, unfamiliar things;
and yet the cottage, books and meals and friends
summon: too dear, and too habitual
to pass up now. A secret, fond, farewell;
an inner promise - and we turn and walk
through pastures, to the village out-of-view,
where the stones are gathered to make homes.
And whence the square grey tower must be -
float bells that warmly scrape and curl the air -
a gold-wood pestle round the bowl of hills.
Swaledale is one of the famous and beautiful Yorkshire Dales.
Poetry Atlas has many other poems about Yorkshire.
Sunset in Swaledale, Yorkshire