The Night Watch

(a draft here of something that came as a consequence of a brief stay at the guest lodge of the Cistercian monastery at Mount St Bernard's, Leicestershire, which, by the way, does not have a spire, except in Pugin's original drawings.)

Monk's Guest House

Some distant schools of stars in swarm

above a spire, and farm,

and drowsing cows. All meat and milk

in steep sunk sleep, a cud of dreams,

untroubled by the muscled tower's

electric prod, its bells' peals' starry tongue

this herd has never heard

since its first day tired. My watch face

says three and my slow animal wakes

as the bells' claw and clamber breaks

the burr and mumble

of where am I am. Legs and arms, feet

to hands assemble

like lines racing a plough. I snub

forward into night-buttoned, numb

promising air, head down

toward shell spills of crackle, side

slips of gravel and a door

homed low on a still stone hull

where a shy

bay chapel waits

us and the hushed sparse wash

of dark and morning vigil.

written 8^th -10^th & 13 & 16^th October 2011

© David Bircumshaw