Sheldon, Doddiscombsleigh

Sodden sheep amble sideways 

Huddled and blinking pawns

Windswept across sodden fields

Where herders linger some ways off.

Short whistling in sagging fog,

Smoked fog that beads on waxed canvas,

Fires in the yard,

Peat and dung going up.

I stand across the kissing gate,

Just to take it in again,

To breathe in those smells,

And mud attached like desperation

To my boots there,

Desperate hearts, like mine,

On this side is the place

They send broken vicars.

Burnt out, used up, whisky laden no doubt,

These vicars, on one side,

Shaky legged lambs on the other

At beck and call of mewing ewes.

One belongs to another,

So do I, parish-attached.

Attacked, in the fog of war

Like lions and adders waiting.

I am attached, that is to say,

To God, too,

And He greater than them or me

So it’s not two fields, but really one.

At Sheldon, where shouting seems forbidden

And cloistered conversations tell all

About the action at the front,

Where vicars do battle.

A man and his boy come into view,

Herding, their whistles gathering,

Sheep – lambs and ewes

On their side.

Across this gate,

And me here on my side,

Trying to remember – anamnesis.

The calling.