GILLIAN CLARKE

Railway Tracks

When you talk to me of carrots fresh pulled

From your grandfather's allotment, how he

Would wash the soil away in the green rain

Of the water butt, and then shake them dry;

When I see you carry your fruit away

To the railway bank, and feast there neck high

In golden, seeded grass and flowering weeds,

I see my own mysterious railway track,

Ragwort, dog daisies and valerian

Swim in the great heat on the waves of grass.

Sweet surreptitious smells, like tar and sweat,

And dusty arms,and pollen on my knees.

A vast, dead brick building with a hundred

Broken windows, the track losing its way

Besieged by leaf and stalk and flowerhead

Triumphant to be brought again to their

Own country. Above all, leaping from sleeper

To sleeper, along these lines that lead deep

And parallel into the wilderness,

I hear another footfall follow mine.

But who that child was, what the happiness,

And where the track, no one can tell me now.

It was as good as carrots on the bank

To find a place where wildness had returned.

The old, blind warehouse, full of swooping birds,

Has given me a taste for dereliction,

For the fall of towers, the rot of stone and brick,

For the riot of the ragged weed's return,

The reinstatementof the wilderness.