Audio: Read by the author.
What would you give to walk again
down Foxton’s Station Road, knocking
at the door of Lionel Looker’s council home?
What would you give to be four years old again,
and own God in the adjoining meadow?
What would you give to see the ghosts
of village children playing in the school courtyard?
What would you lose to bring back a time and land
in which everything could be believed?
The security of a village held in time.
What would you leave to live
with your silver-haired father
on the high cliffs of Requa?
What would you give
to have heaven be the way you imagine,
made of the familiar and welcoming?
What you will give is your life
to have your life back.
Nicholas Samaras is the author of Hands of the Saddlemaker (Yale) and American Psalm, World Psalm (Ashland).
