The Drowned Book

A summer so dry

the bracken crackled

like twigs in a fire.

The fields grew blond,

hopelessly flyaway.

Around the reservoir

heatwaves walked

the crazy-paving

mud like revenants

of stink. And then a gable

showed, a hint first,

then accumulating evidence:

a wall rendered with silt

raised slowly like a wreck

for fear of sundering;

a door in its frame

that had fallen out whole;

the roof slumped in,

but gently, off its greasy

stays. It took a week

before the blister crust

might take a child's weight.

The youngest, lightest,

got there first-the first

for thirty years. Peered

in. Thin mud drapes

like dust sheets. All

moveables gone, but

in the corner, a square

stone sink, still full

to the brink and-he'd swear,

years later-as he brushed

the surface, something pale:

a book. (How long had they had

to load the cart, the waters rising?

Sunday-dressed for the sale,

the neighbours, condolent

as crows . . .) Pounds, shillings,

ha'pence, farthings. As he touched,

the columns shivered, the fine

lines of profit and loss

dissolved and he clutched

nothing solid-a swirl of scurf

as the water grew milky and,

for such a hot day, oddly cold

and when the others found him

crying, there was no proof.

Nothing he could hold.