Houghton House

Go there. Amid the ruins
you can make out, just,
from walls left standing,
the H-shaped core of the first house
- H for Mary Herbert.
House and Lady Beautiful.

The Lady long dead, of course.
The House still beguiling though ravished
is open to all, every part exposed:
halls, loggias, chimneys, colonnades
whose plastered sides, whose red grit bricks

call more loudly than any visitors' book.
Names crowd the pillars, scratched or carved with care:
M.A. BOXFORD 1874;
J. SKIDMORE (chiselled deep): initials galore, and
Nigel loves Anzia 1998.

To the north brazen patches of rape
mimic sunshine in the flat stretch below
where chimney fingers from the huddled sheds
at Kempston Hardwick and nearby Stewartby
scribble in the sky in drifts of smoke
their dwindling signatures.
Peter Stileman