There where the brambles curve
in crazy hoops and giant ferns
keel over into their graves,
the September sun discovers the
tumbled stones- fragmented
grammar of a hidden landscape.

Levered boulders at the base,
the dry-stone walls curve over
the heathery slope. See where the
weak sun touches the 'lazy-beds'-
the spade was handy on the hill.

To this day their voices rise up:
men shout, women scold, children chant
and dogs bark.
Neither hunger nor fever could still
the 'proverbial gaiety of the people'.

Now the fox rattles the stones
where the waters gush from
the blue rock; in the first frost
of the high moon stone cabins are
tombs edging closer to the loam.

                    [see also  Broken Silence]
                    [see also  Surplus Population 2]