The winter of our long search
for Rosewell, we followed ghosts
of buried roads through cornfields,
perplexed in a panorama
of unpeopled fields and copses.
Time and again we halted
in the place where it had to be:
the great house, the legend. Saw
only the crows, ploughed areas,
a few vine-hung islands of trees.
Went by water, walked inland
to the same clearing, staring
while the wind said “No, it is not
a mirage.” Vast creepers cumbered
the towering walls. A tarnkappe*
of leaves hid windows, stairwells.
Forest trees embraced in the hall.
As we moved into this tangle
of time, daffodils frolicked
at our feet in surges of light
from what long-sleeping beauty’s
touch, on the lawns once emerald?
*The “hat of darkness” given to Siegfried in the Nibelungenlied. It renders its wearer invisible.