This poem is taken from Poetry Nation 3 Number 3, 1974.
Two PoemsTWO SECTIONS FROM EXCAVATIONS
III
A dual carriageway of chalk and mud
Betrays earth's tender hoardings.
Willow herb, abundant on the site,
Seeds a vivid life on sufferance.
Yellow machines drone their defoliations:
Give me a lever and I will move the world.
Exhausted aeons flare: life melts away
In a pother of bluish dust. The wind
Flutters a gay festoon of plastic pennons -
These towering inclines are defensible.
From half a bridge, a missed connection,
I consider this arterial surgery.
The land's bones lie in disarray;
Unreadable, her draughty palimpsest.
A new imperium holds, where scholars came
...
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