Stone-Walling Poem by Roger elkin

I Looking down, across and beyond from Roach End
apart from the everywhere greenness of bracken frond,
of trees clinging to the valley
and, up above, the fielded grass
notice the walling imposing a net on the land.

It forces its presence;
has been around so long seems indigenous;
is difficult to imagine otherwise.

The land has been encompassed, its flight ringed.
But the mind cannot comprehend such engineering.
There’s so much of it –
so unspectacular, yet so vast –
put end to end where would it stretch?

Incalculable the many millions of stones.
Even the Pyramids cannot match this mammoth task.

(Today we take so much for granted,
question little that happens outside our home.
Imagination’s a commodity that’s not wanted.)


II They must have worked to a ground plan
those huge, yet still mean, men labouring away –
those moorlands-poor – building a living
in field after field, hillside on hillside.

How else did they know they’d end where they began,
piling stone on stone, packing with flats, the chipped bits,
to make calendars of the past for the future
stretching before them, reaching back and out behind them:
such patience a penance.

And the carting, the quiet straining horses,
the lugging, and lifting, the hauling maul,
the dressing-chisels clipping out messages of possession,
so much worth under the broiling sun.

And after work
the bent spines, torn hands, grit-scraped skin:
such humble offerings.

They might have hoped it would last so long,
two centuries and more –
or was it to be forever,
the monumental permanence never to fall down?

All for your forefathers, you soddy blank-eyed, scraggy sheep
bleating out at trespassers, curved curlews and errant clouds.


III How many hernias did your sort cause
How many deaths
How many folks enslaved in mills
Even the grass entrapped, cajoled

Civilization’s a history of cruelty

See in moor’s flung limbs
those deep wounds

ulcers beyond healing

Only stone-walling prevents you falling in
Keeps from perfection

Keeps purpose incomplete