3  What does remain? View of Market House and Church from East Street, Martock


I could be
Outside the phone box on The Green
Or, no, the moment's not there
It was taken later than memory
All the houses drab cottages
Withdrawn and there was
An enamelled sign on the side of Wally's
Which has gone.

A strange white cloud sprays
Behind a tree over the White Hart, spilling
Almost onto the big Jag parked outside
It is a decay, a white corruption of the tissues
Of both memory and image
It all breaks, I think
Or ends up as cold signless walls
Around tidy streets. The child
Who isn't me
                         phones for help, would
But can't get in

It's decay, worse
It is not decay
But a freezing, a covering
A transparent film that will scratch itself blank
And rigid behind it
Lost in the burning cloud growing
Eating away
At love

Love of the world
Like light
Withdrawn, replaced
A lost habit
By a net
Dragging through and ripping up
Anything left, yet
Alive
And in love
With the pretty, squalid lanes
And puddles

Each time it rains the water runs down
In vast streams and rivers, huge
Geographies of excitement and escape
Shot sometimes with rainbows of petrol
Fragile and poisonous and beautiful

Movement and some sense of glory remain
As memory and place fade and whiten

Love
Eaten away
Holds sadness
Yet alive
Till last