This Little Place in FranceFor Pam Brown and Jane Zemiro
'Oracular formulae too speedily deciphered at dawn'
unable to cure this malady of silence
I relied 'on my single breathe to climb'
to the top of the mountain
where you can find
Mother Mary, a more-than-life size effigy,
doubling there as a lightning rod,
a surveyor's plaque, old shotgun cartridges
and views of villages named after saints
and villas sold off to retiring Northerners.
The roadmaps never fail, except in August
when a new roundabout's complete.
All of it beautiful
but not quite out of reach
in September's mist of burning leaves
when chasseurs bring out their blunderbusses.
Rumours of accidental shootings - the drawback
of camouflage is you become
another man's pig.
This little village has no twin - no cafes
or a bookshop like Blackheath.
As far I know only one man has ever
come here to write - Professor Ratz
the archaeologist who collects old ploughs
and Gallic pottery shards, who
on the national heritage day
mounts his friendly lecture in the Mairie
when the town's significance
rises up out of old mine shafts
and the people congregate
at the old clock tower
and we believe 'that a few signs remain' -
the puff of smoke, the fading motor
of a bread van.
We are not quite lonely here and
on the Rue d'Amondier
especially on days like this,
no 'self torn to pieces and suffocating'
to be seen.
Well, not yet.