At Studley Royal

At Studley Royal

Like the last breath of the long-departed
the faint mist lingers in the distant trees.
The light on the shadowy water seems
to hesitate between surface and depth,
the pools are motionless, silvery-grey,
as smooth-skinned and cold as the complexion
of the dead, the depths like old, sunken eyes,
all forgotten, rotten with history.

My footsteps on the moist grass do not break
the quietness of the still, damp, evening air,
nor waken from its sleep what rests in peace.
The water in its long and narrow ponds
lies in its place with equanimity
or falls neatly in sparkling white cascades.
I study viewpoints and take photographs
of lakes and temples, statues, stately trees.

Reaching the gentle curving Half Moon Pond
I walk slowly (for I have been here before),
waiting for the moment of 'surprise' -
Yes! - in the gloom suddenly I see it -
the shadow of the old grey, ruined tower,
and now the landscape plays its teasing game
as the ruins appear and disappear
amongst the trees along the winding path.

They have gone now, those eightenth century men,
and their consensus of enlightened taste;
gone too are Henry's opportunist thugs
who eagerly dragged roofs and gutters down,
ripping and burning priceless artifacts -
the price of lead the only thing they knew;
and that frail, other-worldly choir of men
yielded to silence, or were paid to go.

And what of that young, solitary man
who took this pathway thirty years ago?
Where now the springing step, the summer glances
as the light fails on this spent, autumn day?
Glancing back, and hesitating between
surface and depth, I tread warily through
my own historic landscape, old memories
weighing on me like a heavy bag.

A holiday in Yorkshire - on my own,
then later, at the Architectural School,
chose Fountains Abbey for some study sheets,
tearing up the guidebook for the pictures.
Few photographs show what I looked like then,
but today I come loaded with cameras,
as if a record of a day might be
some small defence against dissolution.