Winter
How do you bury a voice?
But everything in winter is
interred, the entire message
of seed and store and knowledge
tunnelled under the hardening soil:
a shield pulled over, a lid,
a frozen blanket, then
the long huddle of echoing.There's no
place
Like this place
Anywhere
Near this place
So this
Must be the place
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A mean damp winter sky
slung over hills and hope.
Raise your eyes to rain,
to birdsong and the endless
surf of the distant road.
Beneath the land in tunnels
made by man or water
the blackness stays the same.
Sometime not nowadays
these were mineral lines.
He's not from here anymore.
Some just stick to themself.
Back in five minutes.
What do we bury under
the long shields of memory?
Toys and cigarette cards,
pony dung and cans,
tapes and polystyrene.
Graffiti fills in the letters
we wrote to our futures,
damp blooms on the walls.
There's no place
Like this place
Anywhere
Near this place
So this
Must be the place
Spring
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Climb into the skyline
where green shaves the blue
and birds will burst the clouds --
partridges probably, finding
spring's chisels of warmth.
New growth will climb on
the pear-tree wood stiles
air carves in the mind.
The naked earth
is warm with spring
the bursting trees lean
to the sun's kiss. |
Cattle gather in sombre
groups of foggy breath
where partridges walk abreast
in wide straight crying lines.
The first springs up, stretching
one wing outwards and down:
he draws his foot down the feathers
and makes a crackling sound.
The coil of spring
will not unwind
with gentle slow precision
but a wild flick.
Kids come up in little cars
and do their druggy thing
with mineral water bottles
and that's a kind of spring
where, against the warming sky
the sandstone partridge sit,
no wind ruffling the feathers
etched into these heights.
The naked earth
is warm with spring
the bursting trees lean
to the sun's kiss.
Summer
Down in the greenwood cellar
past the steamy carpark
full of lunchtime couplers
down the wet wood stairs
slapping at the flies
to where the air is stained
with resin, where the silence
is always washed away.
A sun of peevish yellow
its summer mischief gliding
in grace-arched branches
green tasselled with gold.
Here's the blue bridge walking
between the washing pools
and the wishes of the women
carrying the ghosts of clothes
back up the slopping steps:
tall women, blue with shade,
and their husbands at the top
sun-bright with faithlessness. The bridge
crosses the fringe
between water and sky:
can it carry you away
from river to clouds?
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Who descends the wood steps now
to stand in summer's cellar?
Cider bottle bearers,
kids with paraffin and time
to burn, Mr Chainsaw.
Who'll wish on a lozenge of water
and watch the blue bridge walking,
washing the grass-stains from light?
A sun of peevish yellow
its summer mischief gliding
in grace-arched branches
green dazzled with gold.
Autumn
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Who did they bury here?
An industry. Its barrows curve
around the river valley
where the small islands fade
and the girls go with bridles
and the men with rifles
and bicycles have dogs attached
and walkers wear their clear rainhats. |
Honey, crimson, brown,
leaves start to tumble down.
Crops gather, stook and stack,
golds decay to black.
The viaduct emprisons
the memory of smoke
while the sun drags through new grass
like something we shot,
and the branches wave to birds
writing and unwriting their farewells
in wing-letter, leg-letter on
the whitening page of sky.
Ash leaves are the first to take
descent in spiralled flight
to glide and drift abroad,
silent as the butterflies.
Stone shaped in cones
is our season's memorial:
we stand it against millenia
more eloquent than song,
our giant mimicry
of the methods of the forest
as though we could grow again
our voices unchanged by their graves.
Honey, crimson, brown,
leaves start to tumble down.
Crops gather, stook and stack,
golds decay to black.
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