* * *

These Old Songs

grow in the mind,

their rhymes chiming endlessly

with the sound of feet walking

or rain falling or being taken up

by garden birds, one line at a time.

Landmarks, favourite stones,

reminders of moments

that only history makes important,

we hum them down to immortality

so that now they fence us in

with the faces of lost opportunities,

and all the moons and Junes that ever were

are meadow-larking above England.