Over the Dead Flatness of the Fens

Like columns of mist in some temple to a vanished god, the late cloud-stacks mass over a June reduced to the sickly greens of the Norfolk broads; and, above the steam-soiled mess where earthworms grovel, where lumpish toads set up the resistances of grace, where badgers undermine the tarred road, I watch the canvas of that underpainted sky through a jellied glass of vermouth while the gravestone crops up and an oily wind steels itself to the south. There certain winged creatures from a century misplaced on shelves take the day down with a moaning chant known to themselves.