IN ARDEN

"This is the forest of Arden ..."

Arden is not Eden, but Eden's rhyme

Time spent in Arden is time at risk

And place, also: for Arden lies under threat:

Ownership will get what it can for Arden's trees:

No acreage of green-belt complacencies

Can keep Macadam out: Eden lies guarded:

Pardonable Adam, denied its gate,

Walks the grass in a less-than-Eden light

And whiteness that shines from a stone burns with his fate:

Sun is tautening the field's edge shadowline

Along the woods beyond: but the contraries

Of this place are contrarily unclear:

A haze beats back the summer sheen

Into a chiaroscuro of the heat:

The down on the seeded grass that beards

Each rise where it meets with sky,

Ripples a gentle fume: a fine

Incense, smelling of hay smokes by:

Adam in Arden tastes its replenishings:

Through its dense heats the depths of Arden's springs

Convey echoic waters - voices

Of the place that rises through this place

Overflowing, as it brims its surfaces

In runes and hidden rhymes, in chords and keys

Where Adam, Eden, Arden run together

And time itself must beat to the cadence of this river.

Charles Tomlinson

I love the interplay of 'contraries' and echoes of otherness (Arden as Eden's rhyme) the assonantal edginess of not-quite chiming words (consider 'Adam ... macadam'). The sheer density of description achieved here while also holding the sensuousness of it at arms length ('In runes and hidden rhymes ...'). Tomlinson looks at Eden and realises he is not there. And yet ...