English scene

English scene

Digging in the field in rain,
in muddy smock and muddy boots.
We watch him at the hedgerow,
His shovel round the roots.

A bearded man above a spade,
patches at elbows and knees.
Timeless. A church spire glows
golden beyond the trees.

This does not change: a Roman
villa once stood here. These lands
were worked by slaves, by serfs,
and there a scare-crow stands

as from some picture-book,
beyond the digging man.
Aerial photographs show lines,
reveal the enduring plan

of the spade’s slow centuries.
Saxons dug here, Danes, maybe.
Churls in muddly smocks and hoods –
And in their digging they might see

a coin turned up by the spade,
and pocket it, or a piece of bone
to throw away, pieces of a picture
or some curious-shaped stone.

They might sell them for a drink.
Rooks in grey trees, distant cows …
How long have men dug here?
Nearby the gold-grey rows

Of the old farm buildings:
Cots, outhouses, stone stables …
How many crops were planted
Before this crop on trestle tables

of pottery, bones, coins? He digs,
as those before him, in the cold
for a paper, or that tenure even
which beckons more than gold.

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