The Absent Crag

Late evening, coming from the crag alone

down to an empty road, discovering

I was the last to leave -

seeing no cars or people there -

turned me round to look again.

Those couples huddled on the summit;

the climbers running ropes up high

or crafting extravagant ballet moves

upon the boulders nearby;

Under orders that knot of abseilers

barking excitement or perhaps fear;

Kids scrambling and parents frantic

in pursuit - all had disappeared.

There were no words to interpose;

nothing to possess or hold

but this rough, forsaken hill;

Wind-worn, crazed, unshaped

stone like Jurassic bone;

A windfall architecture

holding me still.

Stalks of grass sift in the breeze

while through this lunar emptiness

a ceaseless human absence

now peoples these stones;

Clinging to crack, fluting and slab,

lacing the rock faces with chalked

features and lines, and changing

this cliff into a hanging playground.

Slowly down an angled slab,

gouged and smoothed by tricouni nails

and buffed to glass by countless boots,

I run my hand, to touch a precious past;

And now I sense how many years

of youth here sang their way

to become young and spirited

in this twilight again.

Night gathers in, but another day calls

new pilgrims to this promised land;

devotee or tourist, each intent

on meeting wilderness head-on -

in games of conquest or stretching

senses over the abyss:

smitten or smiting, the wildfire

ever singing in their blood.

And then? Aeons will scour and wrack

to leave at last a stone worn thin - spent

and fenced from all adventure;

A relic which the curious may come

hearing whispers of a grail-like legend

stirring in the archaeology, the dust

long absence nourishes.

After absence, there is only silence

returning to earth, wind and sky.

And behind healing silhouettes

impossible thoughts, dying

in darkness beside an empty road.

[Almscliff, August 1992]