Roger Garfitt
Four Windows
One window looks over the ground
this cottage used to rent,
the thin strips across the river
they ditched and drained,
winter floodplain
where the yearlings summered:
now the plats have gone back,
and the marsh climbs the hill.
One window looks over the road
to the stalls and shippons,
five sheds in a quarter acre:
haphazard joinery,
higgler’s pigsties;
a carved pew-end hangs as a door,
latched with a nail; working silence,
whose makeshifts lack a second hand.
One window looks to the hill slopes
where the good land begins,
natural pasture, easy sheep-runs:
no half measures would work this land,
that needs thrift and dry weather to
come together,
or dead growth and damp scorches it;
now below the contour
disuse is a slow fire.
One window looks back to my desk
— thriftless trade, whose measures
take time-and-a-half to complete.
One tune only answers
either master,
that ditch and line run clear, and sing.
I set my scale, work to this ground,
who can work it no other way.
Page(s) 7
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