GARWAAN

There was a smallish hostel, I recall,
high on the Old Moor, with no road. A flinty track.
The mountain bikes we have today might just have made 
it there. Not so the cycles we had then. We played it safe
and walked them to the top. Then through enclosures
where the pigs roamed free, and we'd arrived.
First thing we saw: a notice in red paint:
NEW CYCLE TYRES FOR SALE No need to wonder why.

Self catering. The shop was out of food. Just bread
was still in stock. A makeshift supper, then next day
we're off to hunt for gulls' eggs for our toast.
(One more black mark against my youth.) And as we ate,
the warden told us of a village lost to sight and sound -
but he knew where! Below the Gulls Cliff Rocks. The gulls
were villagers, now elevated to the spirit medium of air.
We went to see. Saw nothing - not surprisingly, 

we thought. That night, provisioned now, we're back
and asking him again. The village never had existed,
he tells us, except in their imaginations. Then came
the great rock fall, rocks raining down on them -
from heaven, so some said. It was too much for them.
Imaginations could not quite sustain it under such
an onslaught. Thus, in its turn the village fell
into a darkness greater than all other darknesses.
Lost to sight and sound. Lost to man for ever.

Which did not quite explain the village sign...
He claimed he'd found it, down among the rocks.
It had been hung in pride of place, above
the basins in the wash room: GARWAAN