Nothing has changed since I first saw
Helpston flash by, years ago now,
the same wide fields, the flatness,
the serious hedges. Valerian
has thickened up along the track and there are stands
of dog daisies and plumy grass.
John Clare lies at Helpston and I learned
only today that Blunden took his poems to the Somme.
He read them in old shell holes where
convolvulus trailed all bright with butterflies
and larks sang overhead. John Clare
wrote about such things too.
War never burned his land,
the churches and the lonely farms still stand.
