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, Hafiz.
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.
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By David Selzer