Seven years ago today we heard the words that freeze the blood, strike dread into the bones of any countryman.
"A case of Foot and Mouth Disease has been confirmed..."
The link takes you to 'Fields of Fire', -articles, poems, diary entries about the 'other' horror of 2001. Please, if any friends, or indeed casual passers by or even enemies, come through this blog, take a moment to have a look at these pieces-
This poem is one I wrote in 2005 for the anniversary, after driving though lands that were silent in that Spring, Summer and Autumn 2001, and we wondered if we would ever see an animal grazing the fields ever again.
AFTER THE FOOT & MOUTH
WAS NEARLY FORGOTTEN
Fat sheep drift apprehensively
against dry- stone walls
('Sheep by the wall means storms on the way'
Countryman's Law still rules okay.)
the sheep shelter
in shallow hollows
horizontal sleet turns to snow
paints white stripes
in furrows of ploughed fields
ice motes gather in the wind
hard as lead shot
group to zero in on target
define boundaries of medieval strips
reveal shapes of lost landmarks
no longer recognised
on elevations that present eighteenth century
aspects
of the Grand Estate
(The Stately Homes of England
the family pile in flames
the scions live in the stables now
Preserving their family names)
A timeless steeple broods
Sat squat on middle-aged spread of greystone girth
Solitary, predatory,
it presides
over snow-sketched ground-plans of its defunct hamlet
drawn on a magic slate
or in a mason's sand box.
The church
hoards Black Death bones
bowed and twisted
under the yew bound acre
symbolically divorced
In space
in spirit
from the unfaithful departed
down the road
their sale boards proclaim
desirable country residences
blank glass sides of barn conversions blink
milking- parlours developed into luxury duplexes
with multiple parking for shiny 4WDs
in the new-old village
sans Post Office, bus, school, pub
and mud.
And the sheep, heavy with unborn lambs,
press in dirty fleecy drifts,
spoil the pure new whiteness of the fields.
Hefted in their atavistic memory
are burning pyres of wholesale slaughter
and the tenacious survival
of a way of life.
******************************************
1 comment:
I remember well the disaster. The images on the TV were so ghastly, you could practically smell them. In the airports, passengers returning from England had to walk through antiseptic boot-baths. Still the question is asked: "Did you visit any farmlands on your trip?"
Who knows if wholesale slaughter is the right way to deal with these outbreaks? It seems such a medieval solution, considering our age of inoculations and antibiotics. Hoof and mouth, though, it gets in the soil, doesn't it?
Things do return to normal--the sheep come back from hoof-and-mouth, the bombed-out city sports cranes. Maybe the shadow of disaster hangs out in the corners, though, and in the minds, of course, of those who remember.
More English country stories, please. Like this.
Post a Comment