London is quiet.
It is nine o’clock
On Saturday morning
Outside the British Library.
They wait for the doors to open.
Of all ages, of all nations,
Bags under their eyes
And at their sides,
Bookworms at the slip,
Their troubled dreams
To be cleared by
Another person’s words.
Under a high ceiling
Filtering in light
A circle of security at the desk
To wrap around
Troublesome desires.
They read another woman’s thoughts
They share another man’s feelings
They place footnotes
To past lives and his stories
Foot soldiers of the half-truth,
Bearers of white lies,
They feel secure behind
A pile of books.
I am safer that way.
I read therefore
I am not.
Better to sit than to act,
Better to note than to write,
Better to keep silent than to speak
Better to measure the days
In a rotation of pages
Than to halt the clock
In a spontaneous surge
Of creative disquiet
To allow Imagination be free.
Where are the May Day
Lovers kissing under
The apple blossom?
It is not too late:
The sun still shines in the courtyard
And a warm wind blows from the south.
*
They came from the four corners
To the stone circle
On the wet moor
Before dawn,
From Tavistock, Totnes,
Plymouth and Okehampton,
From Cornwall and Devon
And much further afield.
To celebrate Beltane,
Half-way between the spring
Equinox and the summer solstice.
And I did not forget
The workers and peasants
Of the world.
Instead of dancing
Around a maypole
A cellist played
In the centre of the ring.
Her cello planted deep in the earth,
Her music reaching the heavens,
Mingling with
The music of the spheres.
Wild horses
Stamped on wet grass,
Peaty water in the stream
Appeared to go uphill.
Mist swirled in the hollows
And around the tors,
Slowly evaporating in
The climbing sun.
Peter Marshal
Photos Elizabeth Ashton Hill