Henry was a local sign-writer who also charmed away people’s warts. Over 40 years ago, he met my brother, Craig, in Burthallan Lane on the way out to Clodgy. Here, Henry pointed out what he called ‘the quietest place in the world’. On a more recent walk out that way, my brother remembered what Henry had told him and pointed out the place to me. It is still there.
The Quietest Place in the World
for Henry and Craig
For all that its location is exact,
it can’t be mapped, captured by a photograph,
or browsed on Google Earth, but it is there,
in the very spot that he had said,
near where the lane turns, just before it
opens up and you see the sea ahead.
It must be forty years ago when Henry showed
my brother where it was. Now, on that same track,
in a sudden flash of memory, it all comes back.
It’s near here, he says, getting his bearings,
and tells the tale of what had been revealed.
And so we stop and listen, but what we’re hearing
is the robin close, the chaffinch farther off,
wind through the blackthorn and the gorse,
rural sounds you would expect, a normal quiet place.
But then he sees it over there, overlaid
in the deeper hedge where all sounds soak
into the soil and the coiled green shade,
and a living silence looks back out,
like your own image reflected in a well,
or in the eyes of something wild and gentle,
and it makes a hollow in the thicket
of your gut about the shape and size
of a sleeping fox, not a spirit,
symbol, metaphor, or reference
to some vague internal psychic state,
but a real fox dreaming in the quietest place,
in the exact same spot that he had said,
near where the old lane turns, just before it
opens up and there’s the sea ahead.