At Five-Way’s Brink
All along the downland ways life pulses
In that haze which clouds the present now and
Cloaks the heart oblivious, in times
Where day nor week has much of power on
Those warm, soft, and perfumed summer hours,
Not to reason, nor else to reach at all,
Yet from the north rises a wind unseasonal.
High up above the Weald tempest readies,
Whose grey eddies rush down north-west and surge
Up Wiston path, up un-turfed scarp and out
To swirl round hallowed ring five times, six times,
And on the seventh round, to drown the voice
Of fluttered leaf and whispered song, of words,
Of place and personage long since forgotten.
Down from tumultuous Heaven a storm!
A storm that tears, and rends from branches leaf
Still green with summers joy to whirl in air
And meet the birds up there, whose wings and calls
Strain desperately against the current which
Floods Nature out from her solstitial bed,
Yet raises not a single lowing head
And east and south along the seaward slopes
The skylark hopes and calls out to the sun,
Whose light yet pours through building cloud in rays
To light that calm lost certainty of days,
But quickened is the beat of Nature’s pulse
As flies away the sweet and heady air
Of summer.
II.
From the obscure mists of Atlantic coast
To wash through open countryside and pull
At leaves just brittled by the autumntide,
Spirited air,
At last to fly up wooded ridge and crash
On silver bones of died back ash in gusts,
An ever-breaking tide invisible,
Of waves that rush when north wind blows, off-shore,
On-shore, off-shore the spirit goes to meet
Land where the ash tree grows, and in shelter
There to rest.
III.
For days the air had hung with gravity
And heat intense and undissolved until
The time some scent did make the waters edge
Where at last the south wind sprung and
To the coils of this up-country gasp
Great flocks of seagulls grasped, to let themselves
Be pulled apart from swelling mass of surf
And sea, to leave the green and rolling deep
For fair and silent white, once more to be
Of rising air, and wide and clouded skies.
To soar up high, up high above the land
And cast a bland, disinterested glance,
With those tormented and unblinking eyes,
At that which vies for primacy; or else
At least for permanence at posts on all
The roaring coasts where ever breaks the waves
To which the land awakes ‘neath North Sea fret
Or cloaked in swirling western mists, or yet
To shrill and airborne cries carried northward
On the wind.
And into sheltered steep-sloped coombe they flew,
And with them, from that greater realm where all
Is with that frantic ceaseless motion done
With which a shoal will shimmer in the sun,
They brought a blast of beating wings and eyes
Which still unblinking asked from dunnock and
From house sparrow some comment on the vast.
A call from which they hid away; too small
By far are hawthorn bush and elder tree
For whom not even time can form their claim
Upon enormity. So little can
The hedgerow know, in its still, quiet shade
But of the countless fleeting lives which hang,
as staged, on branch, in root, collected there
While still en-route cross downland ridge or down
The bostal paths, to there be stilled at last.
Be stilled, that is, until such south wind blows
As those that bring the seagulls thus to fling
Up seed and scent into the wild throws
Of rapture that frequent the salty airs,
To flit and fly below the sky until
The still of falling wind and failing light
Make the gulls again take flight to leave
On wings which press a disturbed air to sink
Once more into the coombes and bostal paths,
To join so many thousand whispers there.
Great flocks again, averse to meet one of
Those west-north-west mid-summer sets in which
The darkness starts to fall far out to sea
So that the first of the evenings stars
Might rise out at infinity.
And in a dignified repose, each of
Their number chose one lodestar from that Host
Ablaze, and there in silence hence to fly
To take their place once more as that which ties
The neap recurring tides of land and life,
Out over the horizon line, to Eternity
After Snow on Chanctonbury.
And when at last arrives the winter of this life I hope
that I may greet it gracefully on such a day as this
While the robin repeats his note in unpunctuated bliss.
I shall again ascend these heights on slow uncertain legs
Then turn my back towards the Weald to face the dawns spare dregs
and breath the soul of quiet down, the whole wide lonely scope.
I'll let my spirit catch the wind and take the ways unhindered
That first I walked when soft vetch passions grew uninjured
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And then such words as I have read and these that I impart
Will come once more into my head and cut right through my heart.
"If only life were broad as these dear hills-"
And with the faintly recalled fields of life behind me then:
Each song filled copse I passed, each briared rough through which I fought,
I'll see at last on nothing more than these dear hills could ever
My soul disport!
And in the south will hang, I hope, the pale winter sun
Behind the same mid-morning fog whence sounds of life now come
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Until I could almost believe that snow still coats these hills
and that a "-love so pure fills earth as it Heaven fills"
And if its true that sympathy afflicts Death's sickle's swing
Or if some grace of heavens race is happily attending
I hope they'll let me pass down off this ring and out to sea
Without the crude imprint of feet on my bright fantasy
Written by Rowan Packer
instagram: @rowwiep
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