A PRAYER OF NAMES

           I take a rosary of villages

           from memory.  The details are not clear

           along that lower road.  There's Sherrington

           and Stockton, all worn down by prayer,

           and what's-it-called? - Yes, Corton, where I learned

           to ride.  I hear my shriek as young Miss Jeans

           tugs at my pony's lead-rein, drawing us

           into panic of first gallop.  Hedges blur,

           straw stacks become white intervals of fear.

           ‘You're safe as houses, Nicholas!' as we

           claw distance back past the fluid ricks' refrain;

              my prayer beads slip on lathered rein.

           And down the chaplet of the hedgerowed way

           one bead was often fingered in green days -

           of Bapton I recall a single shed

           along a rutted track, all chimney, arched

           with ivy. In its glimmered gloom I'd watch

           old powerful arms do bellows-magic, strike

           the sparks of weakness out of iron and hold

           red shoes on Stumpy's sizzling hooves.

           And where the rosary bends, there's Tytherington:

           that's where they kept the hounds.  I see a boy

           come hacking back at dusk from hunting hours

              beside the marshalled poplar towers.

           And after Corton, Boyton's next.  That's where

           at someone's birthday once we all wore hats

           and ate bright jellies on stepped manor lawns

           and scared the peacock.  Fingertips pass on

           to Sherrington, white houses round your cress,

           and then the Carrier's Arms at Stockton; here

           warm beer beneath tobacco's yellow stains

           and quiet smithy sunset through bare trees.

           So many gloria patris, aves, I

           have frayed the old beads flat and only see

           the same dim litany, the same glimpsed string

              of names that I can scarcely sing.