He took me in for lunch, a salad and a casserole washed down with ale. What is there to say except that I was there when the first ceramic shards came out and the terra-cotta figurines. They flourished for a thousand years and when the bed of the river rose their cities rose with it, the ground-plan never changing. There are evenings my house is unlit. I sit watching the rooks settling into the trees, and the cars scream past on the M-40.
Headlights vault in through windows, shadows clean the wall and sail away.
A wind of reflections rustles the curtains as 1 think of the Indus people. For a thousand years the brewery of life fermented and stank there, seething in the vats. Passions worked themselves out, seasons and festivals went round like bullocks on a threshing floor. They were a happy people, even their bondmen had brick cottages with two rooms. That's a good question.