TWO SECTIONS FROM EXCAVATIONS

III

A dual carriageway of chalk and mud
Betrays earth's tender hoardings.

Willow herb, abundant on the site,
Seeds a vivid life on sufferance.

Yellow machines drone their defoliations:
Give me a lever and I will move the world.

Exhausted aeons flare: life melts away
In a pother of bluish dust. The wind

Flutters a gay festoon of plastic pennons -
These towering inclines are defensible.

From half a bridge, a missed connection,
I consider this arterial surgery.

The land's bones lie in disarray;
Unreadable, her draughty palimpsest.

A new imperium holds, where scholars came
...