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Ian Caws

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Another Place, Another Time

Sometimes, a traveller would cross the stream
by the bridge and shrink down the level land
where the sheep grazed.  But I never watched them
as far as the hill.  Stones in the water
had all my attention in those days and
hill and horizon could wait till later.

Only when new light crawled over the grass
like insects, leaving a language turned cold
at nightfall, only then I’d raise my eyes
but the travellers had always vanished
and the dark water round my feet had chilled.
Things started were never to be finished.

Night places speak with different accents
and nobody returned to cross the bridge
from the hill.  To return would be by chance
then, by mistaking the route, and if half
asleep, I recall it, it’s the image
of paths through the level land and a self

in the darkness, setting out for the hill,
though I never did.  And morning would come
when I least expected it, and I’d call
to the travellers who would not hear me
on the hill nor keep in their bags a name
to ask for when dark falls on the last day.


Ian Caws is an arts development officer in West Sussex.  He has won many major prizes and has published four collections of poetry since 1994.  The Ragman Totts was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation in 1990.

Page(s) 9

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