The Silence at Penwarna

The was a stream one would assume

was dreaming,

until you see the bank side sign

that warns it's polluted with arsenic.

The poison a remnant of long dead

tin mining far upstream,

where now lush valleys were

scarred out from softer contours.

In the graveyard here

a slab like a granite wafer

thinner than any bone beneath

has been dislodged and placed

ad hoc between other upright slabs,

reverently bizarre in echo of

stone age Penwith monuments,

waiting the day when it will

be properly re-erected.

Grass grows to the thighs

between oak, under yews,

and wind sighs within it.

Paths between the departed 

are all winding, not straight,

as if all who visit linger,

wander to other monuments,

meander while the place

works its wonder on their grief.

If the bells in the tower tolled now,

crows would drop dead from fright.

No chime has been made for decades.

Farm machinery from over the hill,

resounds, diminished, from yellow sandstone,

mellowed, altered, like all else here.

At night in all seasons,

but also on heavy summer days,

time dissolves, expands,

so the place become more itself,

what it once was.

Something becomes other here,

and there seems no such thing

as silence at Penwarna.