The Last Shift by Philip Levine

The Last Shift by Philip Levine

Author:Philip Levine [Levine, Philip]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2016-11-08T00:00:00+00:00


ALBION

On narrow roads twisting

between the farms, if farms

these were and not fallow

fields set off by stone walls

too low to keep anything

in or out. I’d been told

that when the west wind raged

local spirits—all the ghosts

of the unmourned—gathered

on the hilltops where no one

dared to go. We parked

in a little meadow shaded

by ancient birch and sycamore

going silver and gray under

the noon sun. Hand in hand

we climbed until the under-

growth separated us and she—

more nimble than I—took

the lead, and I followed until

the trees thinned out. The only

sound besides our breathing

was the silence. Beyond the first

clearing a stone wall stumbled

up and over a steeper rise.

Once there we saw the land

itself became confused as to

where to go. What, I thought,

could possibly be waiting

beyond still another grove

of birch and sycamore?

That was forty years ago

or more. We were still

young or young enough,

and new to the adventure,

so of course we kept going,

not in the hope of finding

Celtic arrowheads or human

skulls purified by time

and weather, or bronze relics

of lives we knew nothing of,

or what was actually there:

the exhausted chalky soil

of this depleted island

my father fought for. High

above, the clouds moved

against a pure blue sky

or perhaps it was the sky

that moved and everything

else stopped, like the two

of us, listening. Listening

for what? I ask myself now.

Call and response from bird

to bird or the sough of wind

stuttering through the trees,

the voices of a forgotten past?

I can’t recall how long we

stood there nailed to the spot,

hand in hand, expectant,

as though anything

could tell us where we were.



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