Thoughts on earthworks artwork

Earthworks: the remains of ironstone quarrying make the top of the Burton Dassett Hills a great source of unusual shapes in its patina of rolling shadowy clefts.

Overlaid signs of human activity - changes to the land & skyline. Constant footwork. Time made obvious - englobed.

Some recent work:

From John Ashbery: Self Portrait in a convex mirror: A poem so long it is impossible to spark off just one line... here is some of it:

"But your eyes proclaim

That everything is surface.
The surface is what's there
And nothing can exist except what's there.

There are no recesses in the room, only alcoves,
And the window doesn't matter much, or that
Sliver of window or mirror on the right, even
As a gauge of the weather, which in French is
Le temps, the word for time, and which
Follows a course wherein changes are merely
Features of the whole.
The whole is stable within
Instability, a globe like ours, resting
On a pedestal of vacuum, a ping-pong ball
Secure on its jet of water.

And just as there are no words for the surface, that is,
No words to say what it really is, that it is not
Superficial but a visible core, then there is
No way out of the problem of pathos vs.
 experience.

You will stay on, restive, serene in
Your gesture which is neither embrace nor warning
But which holds something of both in pure

Affirmation that doesn't affirm anything."

and

"And I cannot explain the action of leveling,

Why it should all boil down to one

Uniform substance, a magma of interiors."

and

"one piece of surface"

and

"Mere forgetfulness cannot remove it

Nor wishing bring it back, as long as it remains
The white precipitate of its dream
In the climate of sighs flung across our world,
A cloth over a birdcage.
 But it is certain that
What is beautiful seems so only in relation to a specific
Life, experienced or not, channeled into some form

Steeped in the nostalgia of a collective past."

and

"But what is this universe the porch of

As it veers in and out, back and forth,
Refusing to surround us and still the only
Thing we can see? Love once
Tipped the scales but now is shadowed, invisible,

Though mysteriously present, around somewhere."

"This nondescript, never-to-be defined daytime is

The secret of where it takes place
And we can no longer return to the various
Conflicting statements gathered, lapses of memory
Of the principal witnesses.
 All we know
Is that we are a little early, that
Today has that special, lapidary
Todayness that the sunlight reproduces
Faithfully in casting twig-shadows on blithe
Sidewalks.

No previous day would have been like this."

I really recommend reading the whole thing. Get yourself a nice cup of tea and square off a couple of hours to make the most of it. Here is the link.