Encounters

One comes across the strangest things in walks, Fragment of Abbey tithe barns fixed in modern, With Dutch-sort houses, where the water baulks Weired up, and brick-kilns broken among fern. Old troughs, great stone cisterns bishops might have blessed And baptized from, most worthy mounting stones; Black timber in red brick, surprisingly placed Where hill stone was looked for, and a manor's bones Spied in the frame of some wisteria'd house, And mill-falls and sedge-pools, and Saxon faces Stream sources happened upon in unlikely places And Roman looking hills of small degree. The surprise, the good in dignity of poplars At a roads end, or the white Cotswold scars. Sheets spread out spotless against the hazel tree. But toothless old men, bubbling over with jokes And deadly serious once the speaking finished. Beauty is less after all than strange comical folks And the wonder of them never and never can become diminished.