DESERTED QUARRIES

Under the noontime air the earth is baking,

nothing before you, just one poplar stately,

yellowed all round, grass, desiccated, flaking,

paltry paired cabbage whites, all motion lately;

from the cracked earth the beetles come a-leaving,

with gold-leaf sunlight captured carapaces,

spurge, willowherb and widow-flow’r sighs, heaving,

in woozy wafts. A plain of ploughed up races,

in rows of pits, ravines and waterholes

deserted years before, encircling, brown-

yellow in opaque pools, a sunning vole,

a weald of dandelions sheds eiderdown.