A very happy new year to everyone reading! New years bring many excellent things: resolutions, the end of Christmas, slightly longer evenings, and, in my case, the awful realisation that my railcard has just expired. Not being a natural driver, I spend a lot of time travelling around Sussex on the train. I hope the following "litany of names" poem is recognisable for all of us who grew up on the weald and the downland, and the London to Brighton line.
Weald and Downland
The next train to depart across the ancient Weald
Keeping sunrise on the left as it arrows down south
calls at Three Bridges, Balcombe, Haywards Heath…
Set the capital behind you and dare to breathe
Deep. Into the oak woods and the drifted leaves,
The dead in their barrows on the silvered Downs.
Plumpton, Cooksbridge – the castle keep.
Some kind of homecoming, to stand again
in the land of your ancestry, the resonating names
full of the history stretching deep below your feet,
steeped in the silence of those who loved this land before.
Lewes, this is Lewes. Please change
for services along the riverside and past the ditched hillfort.
East to Polegate, Pevensey, Hastings and Ore,
Into the dawn. Or swing southeast: Southease;
Newhaven; Bishopstone; Seaford. The sea.
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