Tuesday 10 June 2014

Adlestrop Revisited

The Poetry Society ran a feature to celebrate the centenary of Edward Thomas’s famous poem Adlestrop. I’m delighted to say they used this poem on their site with a link to a Soundcloud audio version.


A soldier walked through the Adlestrop lanes,
wild flowers sprang where he planted his feet.
He said it was good to be there again
and looked for the station, the train and a seat.

But unlike lost soldiers frozen in youth,
no places stay as we knew them before.
The station had closed, the trains went right through
- no soldiers listened for birds anymore.

Yet some things stay as they always have been:
the foxgloves wave high in the hedgerow;
with bindweed, buttercup, small celandine,
hawthorn, meadowsweet, haycock and willow.

And once where the railway's thunder and steam
drowned out on departure the small bird's song
- now in their arching cathedrals of green
they sing for that soldier loudly and long.



Reading here:

https://soundcloud.com/marc-woodward/adlestrop-revisited

Featured on the Poetry Society website page: 'Celebrating Adlestrop'
http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk/content/adlestrop/

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