Three Poems

Bath Stone

'We may think of ["The Ruin"] as the first of many English meditations on old stones.' Michael Alexander, The Earliest English Poems
First the water, but how
separate the water
from the stone
                Fosse Way
from Jurassic seas

        Remember
the old men working -
picker, chopper, sawyer
monumental masons,
architects
whose elegant visions
clothe the hillsides

Think of the horses working
underground, hauling waggons
...