Drunkards Corner, Oxfordshire (poem)
Here is a place outside of time,
Where the same cows graze the clay mead,
And light spindles soft along the stippled lane
As if it has always rested so,
Filtered by ever-ancient blackthorn boughs
That tunnel haphazard over age itself,
Through summer, once more, and back again.
I cannot say how this lonely place
Betook its name, a name of man,
For no man comes here, drunk or not,
No singer staggers along the ruts,
In time of viscid mud or kicking dust,
On Midsummer or on any other eve.
One act, or one man, long ago aroused this name,
And so it has ever rested so, and ever always will.
But now, still now, the whitethroat scratches rustily
And an ancient peeling notice reads:
‘Please close the gate’, the gate that leads to time.
(June 2007. Drunkards Corner is a bend in an old drove lane that curls around Waterperry Wood in the south-east corner of Bernwood Forest, Oxon. With hindsight, this is perhaps a posthumous Edward Thomas poem).
Title: Drunkards Corner, Oxfordshire (poem)
Author: Matthew Oates
Date: 14 Jan 2008
