Tagged: drowned village
He came from a lost village
he couldn’t remember which one
or how it came to be missing
as it was so long ago
perhaps it had been a frowned
drowned sort of place
or a bulldozed overdosed one
somewhere that wouldn’t be missed
he had been wet behind the ears
but soon fitted in with
the new strangers
although they spoke differently
and seemed disinterested
in anything that was other
his parents never talked about
their origins
and stayed that way until the end
those nights when he could sleep
deep in the cosy burrow of forgetting
he dreamt of a place
that smiled
that worked
that knew its history
what he couldn’t know
was that everyone else
was dreaming
of returning to somewhere
they had never been
he got over it
there had been many villages
lost for various reasons
that’s the way it was
people becoming unwitting
pieces on a giant chess board
that used to be their country
What lies beneath the surface
below the wake of cheerful pleasure craft
and the hopeful lures of anglers
this privileged day of summer?
the old village now lies silenced
its windowless buildings
have wide open doors
that permit brown trout
to enter and leave
this street of skulls
forgotten in the march of progress
stepped over by big money
eels coil around the rusted railings
that contain the cemetery
the dead sleeping
the disturbed sleep
of new surroundings
the chapel
eyeless
wordless
the new wildlife in its pews
that does not understand
it had gasped its last hosannas
in bubbles of oxygen
that escaped its ancient walls
on the day it succumbed to deluge
the final ministration of loss
pike skulk in the classrooms
of the primary school
silt is forming over the white lines
of its playground
the lilt of lullabies
the echo of children’s boisterous songs
stifled by millions of litres
of industrialised water
the shop had been run by
a man surnamed “Shop”
on its shelves
Great Pond Snails colonise
large glass jars
that used to dispense
sherbet fountains
Parma violets
and pink and white mice
the pigeon holes at the post office
have become the domain
of smooth newts and gudgeon
managing as efficiently in their way
as had the former postmistress
who was nicknamed “Post”
the practical and descriptive
naming conventions of a people
who had loved to describe
in an inaccessible corner of the lake side
a sheep wool-snagged
barbed wire-topped fence
disappears into the depths
still taut
still connecting the abandoned homes
to the life that persists on the hillside
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