Country
House Weekend
Geoff Sawers
From the train:
lush meadows
of green
wormed with
slow brown trout-streams
willow and
alder carr-shaded
pollards
standard, a stag-headed oak,
a hump-backed
cart-bridge
and a
forgotten novel.
On arrival:
bags piling
up in the hallway
waxed floors’
reek mingling
fresh-gathered
jonquil bouquet
a demure
capped maid
and to the
distant clicking of billiards
the passing
of a furtive note.
After dinner:
a drink on
the lichened stone terrace
rabbits
white-scudding away in the gloom
round an old
yew-bush half-toppled
shock of
stumbling on a tangled pair
by the lake,
a flash of thigh
milk-white
under the moon
Whispering
later, Over cigarettes
in flushed
complicity.
Sunday morning:
church
missed, coffee lazily taken
an invitation
to walk four miles
for a field
of fritillaries
to make a
decorous foursome, and mask
a breach of
the 7th commandment.
Then a
rain-shower, hurrying back,
a hasty tea,
arrangements, apologies,
and the London
train again.