LYMPSTONE CHURCH TOWER

Unfeeling, head and foot and heart of stone,
more blind than churchyard mole or belfry bat,
as mindless as the mould’ring buried bone,
and deaf and dumb as is the parson’s hat,
this tower has stood firm six hundred years.

Sometimes I give this tower half a nod
in passing, kindly, much as though it were
some gentle giant stood beside the road
who loiters, still and silent, and from there
has watched the traffic for six hundred years.

There’s many of us love this ancient structure
who nurse an image of it in the mind.
We’d weep for it if it should fall or fracture.
We praise it as a model of its kind,
this tower which has stood six hundred years.

This image I love best: by noontide light
the tower soars aloft; the warm stone glows;
the swifts fly high; the sky is blue and bright;
the tower blushes like a summer rose
as it has blushed for good six hundred years.

Others, of course, have stored this image too,
some now alive, many who are no more.
A bard perhaps hymned this same red on blue
let’s say about the time of Agincourt.
A vision shared across six hundred years?

Enough!.. Our tower, head and heart of stone,
more blind than churchyard mole or belfry bat,
as mindless as the mould’ring buried bone,
and deaf and dumb as is the parson’s hat,
has stood its ground these last six hundred years.