Heptonstall: At the Graves of Sylvia Plath and Others

1
People used to set fire to it —
the asbestos mill down in the valley:
disused now, some of its workers
still living out their dying…
Up here, blasting weather and old grime
have settled a blackness into the stone.
Birds double-boss dark spires,
the church clean as a shell inside,
wilfully unadorned but for the shaky
THANK YOU, GOD, FOR A WONDERFUL SKY,
above the children's curved moons,
ringed planets and shooting stars.
2
The plain grey headstone gives the dates
I already know.
At the grave's centre, a rosebush,
barely alive;
but that heath rising from the base
looks permanent,
should survive all weathers for many
a gusty year.
Around, wind-beaten grass, straw-yellow,
yet silken
as hair; more flowerings of heath,
delicately unbowed.
Silent birds wrest nourishment
from gobbets
in inhospitable trees.
3
Three graveyards form the heartland of the village.
In each the Greenwoods have made a home, scattered
abundantly as seeds in earth they knew as their own flesh,
generation after generation achieving three score ten, and more.
They lived shouldering the burdens of steep winds
and constant toil through seasons harsh, mercurial.
Courage balanced by comfort, and a listening gentleness…
an even-tenored life leavened by market days, holy days.
4
Winding streets angled as if to shrug one off…
Without malice, local eyes mark me down as stranger.
Church and churchyard claim this central plateau —
a point of rest, a place to do their levelling quietly:
the whole village coiled around it like a spring.
I climb with the wind's stride, break free
into moorland, and leave with one glance back:
at villagers who tread the cobbles, footsure, familiar —
earthing their lives amidst the layered histories
of rain-scoured moor, ruined valley in mist,
and stones planted deep inside the wind.