With Tess when she was small
Down into grassy ditches
The soft path tipped us,
And hid for a moment the view
Of the crown of the hill,
The sea-mist glinting beyond,
With a kestrel above,
Rising and sinking
On an invisible string.
He swung away as we rose,
Off over valley and hill,
Then down where the river
Oozed like a grass snake
The stretched string pulled,
The hawk hung in its flight
Over the August patchwork
On the white Sussex chalk.
The sediment of centuries,
Here on the crest,
Half fills the ancient ditch,
And plugs the holes of palisades,
Behind the empty bench we near,
Where Milly Theale could well,
Or Lucy Honeychurch have mused
Upon the plunging view.
But then as we moved to rest
On the scarred initialled wood,
Fresh words in chalk,
Addressed to anyone who came,
Or to the sky or view,
Spoke quietly: Why? What
Am I going to do, they said,
What am I going to do?
Did the author want no more
Than that a passer-by
Should seek but not identify
The source of this rough
Scrawl, this mute appeal?
Man and womanhood cry out,
Then stiffen, hide inside
Defences often enough.
For we saw no one, not one in sight
The miles we had come.
There was no way to answer.
The sky, the South Downs,
The iron-age ditches spoke no word.
We held still in a lull in the wind.
The cry of a gull, the caw
Of a rook was all we heard.
©Terry Hodgson2020
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