Too soon, too soon, beneath relentless blades
Do the hues of summer disappear;
From beige, from fawn, to dark earth brown.
Too fast, too fast, do the rolling fields yield up their goodness,
Too fast the burgeoning harvest whisked away:
Sown and grown and swished away within an inkling -
So do the seasons pass us by;
As do we, for our part, like errant bees or cabbage whites
Homing in on late-flowering lavender,
Find our way to Lavenham.

We weekend grockles, we wandering weegees in rustic mode,
Imagining, within these fine structures of the past, some secret code,
Some distant echo of a life we knew before,
Some faint tick of grandfather clock.
And now, as Lavenham settles for the night,
The ghosts, the ghosts that prove us right;
Gazing out from mullion windows, from overhanging jetty,
The ruined merchant, the jilted lover, the homesick servant;
Though yet unkind to cast them as malign, these twilight shadows,
Just sighs among the purlins, whispers in the rafters;
The force that feeds on feelings drives our dreams,
Percolates through plaster, through wattle and daub,
Seeping into tired beams like the nectar of a million bees.

Gathered here are we to pay our dues to this family of ancients;
The wealth but long dissolved that lent it fame
Yet still remains here among the timber frames,
The buckled beams, the limewash fade: the magic still remains.
For in truth what are these squiffy shapes, these wonky lines
But a gay parade of our favourite aunts and uncles, eccentrics all?
A party piece, a leaning game, some leaning further than they ought,
As if emboldened by a glass or two of sherry;
Some so skew-whiff with age that we start to doubt
Not their lurching gait but our own; yet no mere museum pieces these
But lived-in, cared for living beings.

Now a tourist teeters on the Market Cross
To take a better photo of his friends;
To say in years to come: "Yes, I was there
That day, in the little heart-shaped market square".
And from the corner of the little market square
No finer vista than that which opens there,
Like a barometer stuck between fair and fair.

I am as a weathervane, turning I know not where:
Now the graceful sweep down Prentice Road towards the hills beyond
Now the noble tower, the watchful parent, the matriarch.
And all around the antique houses rest, rest against each other,
The Great House against The Little Hall.

Do they but dream that so dote upon the past,
Weary of the neverending change, the world where nothing lasts?
Or is a greater force at work, like the ghost that leaves no impression,
Guided by that unseen hand towards some unlearnt lesson?

Farewell then, dear Lavenham, farewell the jewel on the hill;
Like a wheel in a slowing clock, learning to be still.