High Terraces

They mess you up the stones and boulders.
They may not mean to but they do.
They stand there each on one another’s shoulders,
Then topple down just for you.

Man hands on these terraces to man,
The rock itself from some coastal shelf.
Either leave it now or stand in wonder
That you might build them up yourself.

(With apologies to Philip Larkin)

That’s me in facetious vein again. But it is a high terrace long collapsed. I cut back all the overhanging ivy and spent a while digging out part of the collapsed stonework.

It seems to me an improbably high terrace for merely agricultural ends. I suspect it was originally built lower and was then raised up as later non farming owners raised the level of the patios around the house. No other terrace on our four acres is nearly so high nor has suffered such a grievous collapse.

I am constantly humbled by the backbreaking work peasant and sharecropping farmers undertook to convert a 1:3 hillside into small strips of roughly horizontal ground fit for growing the necessities of life.