For David Alexander

‘Have I not reason to lament

What man has made of man?’

LINES WRITTEN IN EARLY SPRING William Wordsworth

An old friend lives in a village recorded

in the Domesday Book. Thirty miles due north

is RAF Fairford. The stones of his house

reverberate at night from the roar

of cataclysmic Stealth Bombers, darts

of death to destroy with fire and ruin

the land of Ferdowsi, Rumi, Hafez.

Monmouth’s rebels were cut down in Cheevers

aka Bloody Lane on the village’s

northern edge, and Hanging Judge Jeffries

meted out the sentences of death

to their survivors at the temporary

assizes held in the village’s

mediaeval tavern – once a hostelry

for a Carthusian priory, a place

of solitude, silence, and self-restraint.