At Waulud’s Bank, Lygetun Rises1
Lee Nelson
The clay calls to the hands to shape it
The worlds between the wood call for firesongs to make them glow
The pylon cries to be repossessed, rewilded, torn-down, reused, re-drawn
Drawn into wires, to bind the timbers each to each,
each to next
to raise the henge
to carve out
enclose
for us
a space within
what was inclosed
Place for song
Place for story
talk and dance
Place for hands to clap
eyes to widen
hearts to swell
minds to find one like them, open, close beside the fire
Place to share a plate, to clasp a palm
to offer balm to minds besieged by light-blue-back-lit-blue-light-bric-a-brac
A human eye that looks on green
with old connections starts to fill
Here girdled round with chalk and clay
with wit and timber, soul and sinew
here
in a carven space
enclosed by us
we find again that thing we lost
Just this
Just us
Justice
Just this:
Here on Penda’s2 blessing we are borne up,
from earth beneath to sky above
Here be dissonant hearts for peace
Here be strange-true minds for love
1Waulud’s Bank is an ancient monument in the middle of the Marsh Farm Estate in Luton – all the roads on the estate have names connected to the ancient history of the area. This is the place where the river that gives the town its name rises and heads off for London. Lutonians often stay and change things where they are - it’s a town of doers, a place of arrivals and settling, whatever the sayers of nay may say.
2Watch Penda’s Fen and hear the request the old king makes of Stephen.
