Eternal Feminine

The downs are certainly lovely, although by mortal loveliness
did you mean they would disappear one day? They are the eternal
feminine, to be walked over, and in and under, they are heaven,
they are rifle ranges, and rusting tanks, they are long summer bostals

burning magnesium-white, ecstatic lovers under hawthorn, they are raves and summer parties, dewponds painstakingly lined with clay, they are dykes, fortifications and manoeuvres, they are G.I. brides and land girls, they are poor land for grazing, rampions, man orchids, they are marked by monks with crosses, marked with horses and men, the turf is covered in oily black sheep droppings, battle lines, beacons, they are military objects, cremated Sikh soldiers, barbed-wire-land, they are inhabited by lone men, they are shortcuts and gas pipes and cyclists balanced on the pedals, they are sheepsheared, rabbitrun, buzzarded, bearded with old men, topped by trig points and aerials and car parks, up and down they go, stiled and gated, hare-lipped, still timeless in summer when the gorse darkens before the sky as if the sun slept in it and smelt of coconut. They are the slow misery of D-of-E-ers, charity walkers, daytrippers, teen daughters. Their backs wear thin like wedding velvet worn at a funeral, quarries, pylons, swifts, swallows, skylarks, girls on pony treks and old women who want to die here, and have brought cake and a deckchair