Giles Watson's poetry and prose
Grey Wethers
Grey Wethers
In the ice-gouged grazing place
A water trough, glazed with ice,
Stands among the sarsens thrust
From soil embalmed in frost:
Wethers of gaunt stone, their backs
Hunched against the wind. A bleak
Sun scours a humped horizon,
The clover stalks frozen
And brittle underfoot. Crows
Retch syllables, the stone rows
Echoing: a plainchant mass:
Altar girt by rimed grass.
Poem by Giles Watson, 2012. The pictures show sarsen stones on Ashdown Estate, Lambourne Downs.
Grey Wethers
Grey Wethers
In the ice-gouged grazing place
A water trough, glazed with ice,
Stands among the sarsens thrust
From soil embalmed in frost:
Wethers of gaunt stone, their backs
Hunched against the wind. A bleak
Sun scours a humped horizon,
The clover stalks frozen
And brittle underfoot. Crows
Retch syllables, the stone rows
Echoing: a plainchant mass:
Altar girt by rimed grass.
Poem by Giles Watson, 2012. The pictures show sarsen stones on Ashdown Estate, Lambourne Downs.