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The Graveyard of the Old Asylum<\/strong> At autumn\u2019s trailing edge I walked there, And seen through the antique lens Its sparse-placed stones were still legible, And nudging loose earth away with my foot And how these were folding up their meaning, Noticed too the coffin-length hollows I wandered round this battlescape, Then reaching the graveyard\u2019s farthest edge, Half an hour was enough I saw a fox dissolve in undergrowth, <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Ian Heffernan<\/strong> was born just outside London, where he still lives. He graduated from UCL and SOAS. He works with the homeless.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Graveyard of the Old Asylum East Lane, Leavesden At autumn\u2019s trailing edge I walked there, Found it just where I recalled, Near the jink of a country lane. And seen through the antique lens Of thirty years, it looked larger, But more isolated, in disuse. Its sparse-placed stones were still […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17012"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17012\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17013,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17012\/revisions\/17013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nEast Lane, Leavesden<\/p>\n
\nFound it just where I recalled,
\nNear the jink of a country lane.<\/p>\n
\nOf thirty years, it looked larger,
\nBut more isolated, in disuse.<\/p>\n
\nThough two which lay beside a tree
\nHad sacrificed their words to weather;<\/p>\n
\nI saw again the little plaques
\nSet at intervals in the ground,<\/p>\n
\nGrowing blank as the wardbound days
\nOf lives as imprecise as water;<\/p>\n
\nWhere the soil had fallen in,
\nEach a trough for matted leaves.<\/p>\n
\nJarring my knees at every step
\nUntil the left began to swell,<\/p>\n
\nLooked through a gap across bare fields
\nTowards the motorway beyond.<\/p>\n
\nIn that obsolescent spot.
\nI turned to go, and as I did<\/p>\n
\nHeard the rapid slap of wings,
\nThe sudden futile fire of birdsong.<\/p>\n