Broadmead Brook

Broadmead Brook

by C.H. Sisson

O you haunting ghosts, I move towards you.

Could I go over these flooded plains

It would not be to any Paradise:

I came from none and I expect to find none;

It was a long journey, or so it seemed.

The scene changed, and thoughts went through my head,

But even the possibility of knowledge

– Never coveted – seemed no more than a slide

From one thing to another. First the child

Tasting the world, and finding that it hurt;

Then the youth, felled by the bolt of love, 

Then labouring where the knowledge was acquired

In self-defence or else in mere ambition.

But late in time and after all deceits,

I came to stand beside Broadmead Brook

As in the very hollow of my hand.

A woman stood there who had been a child

Where in another century my mother

Had played and laboured. Now all was changed,

Yet Broadmead Brook flowed, exquisite woods

Marked her course, for in my fantasy

It was she guarded the bounding deer,

The rabbits and the partridges, and all

Who dare to dream, and be, of England still.