Carol Ann Duffy — Nostalgia

Those early mercenaries, it made them ill – leaving the mountains, leaving the high, fine air to go down, down. What they got was money, dull, crude coins clenched in the teeth; strange food, the wrong taste, stones in the belly; and the wrong sounds, the wrong smells, the wrong light, every breath – wrong. They had an ache here, Doctor, they pined, wept, grown men. It was killing them. It was a given name. Hearing tell of it, there were those who stayed put, fearful of a sweet pain in the heart; of how it hurt, in that heavier air, to hear the music of home – the sad pipes – summoning, in the dwindling light of the plains, a particular place – where maybe you met a girl, or searched for a yellow ball in the long grass, found it just as your mother called you in. But the word was out. Some would never fall in love had they not heard of love. So the priest stood at the stile with his head in his hands, crying at the workings of memory through the colour of leaves, and the schoolteacher opened a book to the scent of her youth, too late. It was Spring when one returned, with his life in a sack on his back, to find the same street with the same sign over the inn, the same bell chiming the hour on the clock, and everything changed.