Did they know – the dogwalkers abiding by lockdown rules,
or the housebound peering out across the uneven green
through their wobble-beamed cottages’ sagging leaded windows
– 
what has lain so long beneath? Question the centuries this
prize estate has rested unencroached, repelling the onset
of daub and wattle, the rush to slate and brick? Or how
the new-town planners who played God so capriciously across the canal
kept spades and diggers so well sheathed here. Did someone’s gaze
distinguish ridge and farrow’s residue topology – still rippling
the fields behind St Mary’s – from tumuli’s time-softened legacy?

The houses still stand in loose alignment: cautious neighbours
and acquaintances at a medieval interment, distances observed.
The terror of miasmas banished now to musty books, they wreathe
their doorways in rose and lavender just as nosegays were once pressed
to faces in wordless prayer. Baskets of perfumed perlagonia dangle now
where pomanders once swung. An ancient pestilence lies buried here,
mulched with taboos and a conspiratorial silence, as if words might yet
turn turf and let loose the spores of history’s fever dreams. Even in these
heathen days, they will not speak of the devil. If we do not say its name,
it will not come again. But did they notice, this extraordinary summer,
a lady’s slipper orchid, dormant since the candlelit days of power cuts
and picket lines, venture a dainty foothold among the waving grasses?
See a damselfly rest momentarily in wall-cast shade, as vital
and vibrant as a sapphire brooch on a widow’s black lapel?