I Love The Hills.

I think I'm associating UYK's piece and CoffeeFairy's one here - and mixing in a memory of my own.

I Love The Hills.

I love the mounds you made.
The hillocks and the humps
Where bricks once fell and then decayed.
I love the chimney stumps.

I loved the words you used to con.
Palaces in the air you said.
Seems each monster Trianon
Is toppled now and very dead.

I didn't see you douse the concrete
With water hallowed at your kitchen tap
Then, we seldom saw you in the street,
Sense of duty wouldn't stretch to that

I love the blessed irony
That people in cheap pants
Rebelling at damp and misery
Might mar bright priestly plans

For you winced to watch them scrape nailed boots
Across the presbytery floor
Even the housing man in his rumpled suit
Raised that same unconscious sneer.

And look how we have built again
Lower, fewer, much more space,
Fewer pennies for the locked-church saint.
But a greener, happier, living-place.

Still, here, I can trace the shape in the earth,
Lost remnants of a time that's better gone,
A knowing witness to the town's rebirth,
A barrow grave in a bitter song.