ANCIENT CHRONICLES

[i.m. P.B. 1919-1999]

No longer smart but glum, the High Street of that place
She used to call affectionately ‘Honey Town’:
Shop-fronts grown shabby and properties boarded up,
Pointless graffiti, dusty windows with cracked panes,
Listlessness, grubby flats, small businesses shut down.
Our new Pandemic Era has brought threadbare times,
A poorer look to this once-thriving rural scene 

Unlikely friends from very different backgrounds,
We often worked together in the Seventies
And Eighties… Dead now for over twenty years,
Devonian through and through, the archetypal
‘Local girl made good’, she only stressed her slow
West Country burr to make a joke or mock
Some literary daftness or pretension. 

Readings, courses, Poets in Schools (a worthy scheme
Long gone): our freelancing required both tact and humour,
Proving much harder work than might be thought in those
More idealistic times of Eng. Lit. Her complaint
Of being cheeked by children she dubbed “Seaton scum”–
Plus subsequent tirade – was shocking, sadder now
In retrospect.… Having moved on and left behind

Her modest origins and starry student days,
This tall, patrician-seeming figure, always groomed
Immaculate, converted to the Catholic myth,
Espousing high-toned snobbery. Quite a far cry
From her sectarian Exmouth, earlier extreme
Retired from academe and later London too –
Where with her second husband she became grande dame, 

Their Hampstead residence the handy pied à terre –
She moved back finally to Devon, set down roots
In an imposing farmhouse a few miles away.
But gradually her sense of humour seemed to wane,
And when my marriage failed, I was non grata
Divorced herself, she never spoke to me again,
For our divergent views were bound to spell the end 

Of friendship.  It’s strange, strolling through this market town,
Dull streets of worn façades and faded lettering;
Decades after her death, how feelings remain mixed
About those ‘better days’ we hoped we’d live to see.
As for our books, proud constructs which retain forlorn
Inscriptions – grimy windows on the past, odd names,
Concealed identities – will they seem grey, prolix?  

Loath to criticise my long-adopted homeland,
Country and county both-I still end up perplexed:
How do philosophic folk become grim cynics,
Or once clear-thinking, witty sceptics turn devout?
Though people just like places age and change, the slow
Effects of compromise, or sure decline, can thus
Unsettle a survivor bidding ghosts farewell.

Alexis Lykiard