Salisbury (short let)
In the year of the election, in early June,
the third year of the war, the four of us
woken – we thought – by the whinnying
of horses; architecture with a sense of irony:
we discover the best (least obstructed)
view of the famous cathedral is from
the top deck of the multistorey: through
the wall, the shrieking of women; beyond
the wooden lap fence, the grumbling
of working men with shovels; an oak tree.
Once, coming back, two deer in the field
below the house: that look (of being looked at),
that stiffening of muscle (sensing
the stiffening of muscle); the horses, too,
turned out to be real, though why they cried
we never knew – maybe, being fed,
or a whip being taken to them, not really
apocalyptic, but a distant rhyme
with the world as it appeared that year.
In bed, later, you said we should think
of the deer as heralds of hope, at once,
walking off into the green of growing maize.