My favourite weather is now,
when the storm clouds beyond the waterfront
build and build and fill the sky
while here there is still somehow the sunlight
that strikes the brickwork on the houses
and quayside inns. Such a contrast
between the ground and the sky,
between what is here and what is coming.
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A curtain of ferns
spreads at eye height
to a child and parts
from the push of a hand
to expose
the shrinking clearing
and the treasure at its centre:
an ancient sleeper
laying like a sunken casket
and shrouded by a puzzle
of oak leaves. The specimen
ornamented with metalware:
rusted plates and bolts,
brooches carried by the dead
to the next station of life.
Close the curtains. Change the scene.
A figure stands at the end
of the platform, his face masked
by a flag. Steam
spirals around him,
Lancaut
I. C13
A peninsular posturing as an island
downstream and on the opposite bank
from God’s eyes in Tintern. Accessed
only via the landward hillside,
protected by screens of woodland,
Wyndcliff overlooking like a fortress.
And at the locus of the scene
stands the infirmary, or perhaps history
has shielded here a leper colony
(who can tell? who is close enough?),
the garden embedded with remedies.
Seclusion; isolation.
II. 2020
I saw your name sunlit above the shop doorway
so naturally I thought about you
making a living here behind the counter,
stocking and selling portions of broccoli,
although I reasoned it could not be your store
and that the name was actually someone else
calling out for you, wanting you to walk in
and talk about more than the weather.
Offa's Dyke
Requisition soil.
Scoop it from a ditch,
raise it and turn the earth
against your enemies.
A narrow rampart
to mark the frontier of tolerance.
Divide land by language.
Make a border out of nothing.
*
Forget the origin. Forget the cause
and let borders be overrun
by bluebells. Let ramparts
degrade. Let the yew tree
entrench its thousand-year-old ambition
beneath the needless ditch and dyke.
Let a man walk the earth
and know that this is the last earth.
