Poet Lydia Macpherson's poem for the Grange.

Requiem for the Grange

The Romans were here - their road

arrows northwards, up to the hill

where Gog and Magog sleep.

The land waits in the summer heat.

 

They want to build here, give it a new name,

a shiny town on credit, a supermarket

with its fake bread smell, blackberries

from Guatemala and chlorine washed leaves.

 

Imagine this all gone: the secret dark

of oak woods washed with sodium,

badgers haunting driveways like refugees,

elderflowers and hawthorn lacy with brick dust.

 

Think of the rain falling on concrete,

going nowhere fast. Think of the plough's

dip and scoop of flint freckled earth

replaced by the bulldozer's rough rape.

 

Tonight, the fields are perfect with dew;

the last swallows hand over their duties

to bats who trace the dusk like bullets

as owls hoot their requiem for the Grange.

Lydia Macpherson June 2008