Wandlebury Ring

October, and a mist drifts from the Fens.
I’m eight years old and standing on the downs

Of Gog Magog Hill with my family.
It’s Sunday, and my brother and I rose early

To pack our lunch and load the stuttering car.
Now we race jagged kites into the air,

Wrestling a wind that tugs our fingers numb.
My father shows us how to make them climb

And twirl like German bombers in the war.
He falls over, plays dead—then swallows air

To chase us screaming round and round the hill.
We make him keep on bombing us until

We flop down and gaze northward toward the Wash.
I imagine stilt-legged fen-folk crossing marsh

Two hundred years before, when farms were drowned.
Now peewits, skylarks skirl over lowlands:

Gog and Magog, sleeping giants, stretch away
And below us are the dark woods of Wandlebury.

We wander into a thick glade of beech
Then circle round the grand, enormous ditch

That ancient Britons dug to build their fort.
Father tells how Romans tore it apart,

Burning bricks from soft East Anglian clay
To mount their rounded arches toward the sky

And pave the Via Devina to Haverhill.
Down the scarp and into the ditch we tumble,

Tramping like soldiers through the fallen leaves
That crunch beneath our feet. The barrow-graves

Where Romans piled their dead lie further north:
But here we roll ourselves in rich black earth,

Then clamber up the bank, smelling of leaf-
Mould, woodsmoke, dirt, and ash. It’s a relief

To shiver and find ourselves on sunlit lawn,
Leaving behind the glade and red hawthorn,

For the cobbled drive. We cross the slippery bridge
And peer together over its mossy edge

At hungry ducks, the sunken cricket pitch’s
Forget-me-not. Behind me lies the ditch

Where today it is my father’s shade I see
Kicking dead leaves aside to unbury me.

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Wandlebury Ring - Program Notes by Composer Kevin Beavers

When Brooklyn Friends of Chamber Music first asked me to write a work for Stephanie Houtzeel and the Cassatt Quartet, I chose to commission poet-collaborator, Andrew Sofer, to write the text for the piece. I had just lost my father to cancer before receiving the commission, and had wanted to write a work about family and times of innocence and youth as I was trying to hold on to and capture memories that I had of childhood and my father. I asked Andrew to explore the themes of youth and childhood in a poem. Andrew describes the result, "Wandlebury Ring," in this way:

Just outside Cambridge, England, Wandlebury is a mix of wild woods and open grassland on the edge of the Gog Magog hills. The Ring itself was an iron-age hill-fort that later abutted the Roman road to Haverhill. As a boy, I used to love pacing the wooded ring inside the earthworks' outer ditch with my family; it was a magical place, rich with twenty-five centuries of East Anglian history. When Kevin suggested I write a poem that evoked my childhood in fen country, Wandlebury Ring was a natural subject. As the poem developed, it became as much a love poem to my late father as to Cambridgeshire. The poem is dedicated to his memory.

The fact that Ms. Houtzeel and the Cassatt Quartet lived on different continents and would only be able to rehearse together the week before the concert became an important part of the inner game of the composition. I attempted to write it in such a way that it would be satisfying for the quartet to rehearse without having a singer present. Thus, the quartet writing for this piece is extremely involved and shares an equal footing with the singer in presenting the feel, taste, and tone of Wandlebury Ring.

I have dedicated this work to Wanda Fleck. Witnessing her passion for music has been an inspiration to me. Thank you Wanda.