This Land Is Real

Who walked here once

under oak and elm?

Those ancient trees,

their names not even whispered among these beeches' leaves,

were the canopy, the roof,

the lid on lives played out in this land,

in this very place,

on this very sod of dirt.

Kings, warriors, great men

are remembered here in works of earth:

their names are forgotten.

Wives, mothers, real women

are immortal here in the toil that built those earthworks:

their toil is forgotten.

This land is real:

those that walked it, have become it. 

Cambridgeshire, May 1992

This was the first decent poem I wrote: it suddenly appeared in my head as I sat by the campfire, while living in a bender just outside Cambridge, surrounded by some fairly dramatic neolithic remains. It was five years before I wrote another line worth keeping…