Having lightly dug an oak sapling into the reclaimed earth of a bleak urban farm above the Medway, she rested on the ceremonial spade and recited by heart Philip Larkin’s poem ‘The Trees’, with its final verse: Yet still the unresting castles thresh In fullgrown thickness every May. Last year is dead, they seem to say, Begin afresh, afresh, afresh. And as that clear and unmistakeable voice carried over the shabby wind-bitten grass, it seemed it was not just the huddled municipal party she was addressing but herself, too. It was her life she was calling upon, the new beginning hers.
