cotswold stone villages mellow yellow

self - possessed economically blessed

carefully placed in the threading lanes

and under grand plazas of tumbling clouds.

How shall we think of you?

greedy for praise and we must give it, in tearooms

      where cultivated couples crouch on wheelbacks

      the light segregated through lattice windows

      and all is well with cake.

 

Your old quarries gouged out

with their fossil conversations

celandine stiffening

gulls wheel on thermals of dust.

 

Bleached as bone and as smug

your Broadway sniffs at Bourton

where the old signals survive

the crossroads meet at Moreton

where the sun on carriages will soon arrive.

 

Out to the west you comfortably climb

pitch and plunge where cars perch

with a love of horizon.