Stone Villages

The stone-built villages of England.

A cathedral bottled in a pub window.

Cows dispersed across fields.

Monuments to kings.

A man in a moth-eaten suit

sees a train off, heading, like everything here, for the sea,

smiles at his daughter, leaving for the East.

A whistle blows.

And the endless sky over the tiles

grows bluer as swelling birdsong fills.

And the clearer the song is heard,

the smaller the bird.

1975-6, translated by the author. .