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Alan Whitaker

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Earth hymn

Uneven steps along uneven paths;
black veins of drystone walls
holding back exhausted meadows,
chewn and trodden where mad eyes glint
in late March snow.

Weasels lithe and ravenous,
the orange taint of rabbit’s piss,
fox musk and chicken feathers,
the smell of blood and custard
from the cart track to the mine.

And on the fringe, the watcher,
camouflaged behind a lamp-eye,
swaying, burning yellow on a mound
of broken stone and iron;
smoke pinned to the frozen air,
dark strands of hessian
knitted to the hollow ground.

Beneath the ruts cast into ice,
ghost quarrymen in single file
against the crag they shaped
from sweat and sinew,
trapped forever in faded light.

And on the fringe, the watcher,
locked into a landscape
he’s waited all his life to leave;
sledge tracks and silence,
forsaken hedgerows of glimpses
and berries, grace and death
in rotting red.

Who comes next
to nibble at the edge?

Somewhere an echo
in a passageway of hair
and fingernails.

 

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