Across the Blue Man's Bower Where a great house once stood By a dammed ochre stream Where my father and uncle swam In sixty-six or seven. Near the flooded field Navigated by red pontoons Where a horse would almost drown Forty years from then. I saw her, neck deep in water, Veiled below the surface, In the crook of the stream willow, Her tender feet disturbing silt. And over the Barfield, Where I first fired a gun And was myself missed By an errant, drifting shot - By just turning into the wind. In the wild hawthorn hedges, I heard the torment of the thrush And felt the nettle’s sudden sear On my young and wandering calf. I saw tortured, matted rushes Blinding the bank’s brisk edge, And the strange switchback bend Leading up to the quarry head, Left overgrown and overlooked. The long line of the gun, Its weight on my shoulder’s slope, And the rot-sweet scent of rain Stirred an inherited memory, Until now kept hidden. As I passed beneath the railway, Alongside the water works And saw white smoke rising From the Old Flatts furnace. I crossed the half-moon bridge, Over fine minnows and broad bullheads. I passed the rusted circle sluice That was terrifying to me then, And near a frigate-grey pylon, Humming in the damp, rigid air, I found the horse-shoe river - Stagnant and strangled, And cut off from its kin.