muddledom

from LXIII

[...] I’m
myself close to the inarticulate. Commonplace
muddledom I grant, extraordinary
common goodness being its twin. I think
of others on such evenings, long forgotten,
placing new flowers in the cemetery;
a sycamore’s disproportionate
summer heaviness, engorged with shadow,
yew-bark, its waning glow, fulvous as sandstone;
empurpled bronzing: highlighted,
the beech’s massive casque. Such grace
dispeopled, do not ask too much of it,
heart’s fulness troubled by its own repose.
But is this asking too much, of nature
and of relationship, of kind? Yes,
to be blunt: eloquence moving
bad conscience forward, backward, across,
like a metal detector.

Geoffrey Hill, "The Orchards of Syon"