24 JANUARY 1987, Page 29

Words

What is it that we make as we obscure Each one our sight with words?

What starts within the mind, what voice sings Uncertainly across our doom?

The autumn mist falls: somewhere under it Figures move, our own, silent.

We call to one another, we are many Yet each voice is lonely.

Forgotten fathers' voices, forgotten mothers' Speak through our own.

Is any man heard who is not a cousin And whose voice is known?

But who they are, and who we, or whether Is settled only by a twang Here and there, in the darkness perhaps Among the trees.

An ocean of voices perhaps, but whose words? Nobody owns them perhaps, they blow away Over the flat fields to the low hills At break of day. C. H. Sisson