After Reading Charles Sisson's 'Broadmead Brook' for C.H.S.
'Where in another century my mother Had played and laboured.' There, for him, all was changed.
For me his lines recalled a Lowland valley My forbears laboured in: with nothing changed Bar hedgerows grown to trees, and fallen stones Marking a farm; and ruined Auchlewan A ruin still. There once my mother played And in another century. I recall Walking with her some sixty years gone by Beside its river to Pinclanty Mill, She naming every field — for for all had names — Those bounded by the river known as 'homes'.
There, by the mill, long silenced, a sheep-pen Shaped like a shield was pointed out to me: 'That was a cottage once, and that is where My father and your grandfather was born.'
And when, long after, myself an old man, I brought his great-grandaughter to thatyalley I found no change bar decay: stones remained Where they had fallen; autumn stalked the leaves, And that was all. Even the curious field's Contour, next to that sheepfold, kept its claim To the name my mother gave and had been given, Which in my turn I gave: 'The Coffin Home'.
David Wright 1920-1994
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