A Mind’s Journey to Diss

Dear Mary,

      Yes, it will be bliss

To go with you by train to Diss,

Your walking shoes upon your feet;

We’ll meet, my sweet, at Liverpool Street.

That levellers we may be reckoned

Perhaps we’d better travel second;

Or, lest reporters on us burst,

Perhaps we’d better travel first.

Above the chimney-pots we’ll go

Through Stepney, Stratford-atte-Bow

And out to where the Essex marsh

Is filled with houses new and harsh

Till, Witham pass’d, the landscape yields

On left and right to widening fields,

Flint church-towers sparkling in the light,

Black beams and weather-boarding white,

Cricket-bat willows silvery green

And elmy hills with brooks between,

Maltings and saltings, stack and quay

And, somewhere near, the grey North Sea;

Then further gentle undulations

With lonelier and less frequent stations,

Till in the dimmest place of all

The train slows down into a crawl

And stops in silence.… Where is this?

Dear Mary Wilson, this is Diss.