the white path led to a place more silent
than any - to ground stiller than a vase
where I felt a secret parliament
had been sitting in the yellow grass
and was staring at my intrusion
before I knew it; with nature prorogued
and nothing there except seclusion -
the bright stones cast no shadow on that road
when I escaped out to the horizon
back into the small noises of the field
and broad blue air from that asylum;
where my hike in the heat had to yield
to panic at abandonment that day
and presence that would never make way
Blackwells
Oxford
1 July 2018
Port Meadow is a large field that runs some way between the Thames and railway line. Burgess Field Nature Reserve is an area off it. I went there on 27 June for the first time since the winter of 2008. One is never far from the mysterium tremendum or the panic of Pan in these West Oxford fields.
” I will show you fear in a handful of dust” as Eliot wrote.