iv. Here’s a place to watch the day beginning, see the world lifted up out of night time like a child from the womb, into a milky landscape, not quite defined. The sunless air very cold. Birdsong beginning, a cattle truck rattling past. The sky in the east a sharp yellow, full of sunlight coming from behind the hill. And now here it is, blazing with gold, making the grass bright green, sharpening the edges of the rivers. Stonework sparkling on this Jubilee tower, the sea becoming blue. We call them the Dark Ages, those times that we know nothing of, except for glimpses like this – of someone who was buried here, wrapped in a cloth and laid in a boat-shaped coffin, setting sail one morning into light. Elizabeth Burns |