Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Poetry Library Southbank Centre - The Poetry Library housing the Arts Council Collection at Southbank Centre

« Previous item
Contents of this issue
Next item »

Nancy Campbell

print this page

Cowrie hunters

Nancy Campbell reading Cowrie Hunters 1456 KB
Play - Right click here and select save to download the audio file.

 

They are prospecting for cowrie beads
amongst green glints of glass salted by years at sea;
flecks of white shell; cartilage splinters;
dangerous fragments of ship shrapnel; 
garlands cast for the drowned;
rusted things once useful;
barnacles’ dust; amber rocks;
stones scored with arteries;
mollusc speckles; iridescent slivers;
squat yellow cochleae polished by hourly washing,
small mouths opening into pi’s infinity.
The shell gatherers, mismatched pair
bundled in dark cast-offs,
bend down to scan the shingle:
What happened last night on the drifting shale?
Edging forwards - standing up - stooping again -
looking aside at random,
they are prisoned between work and hope
and the conflicting scale of the horizon.

Did they find the right curve of the bay,
the very crook of Lothian land
between Eyemouth and the Head,
that legendary place where year on year
the cowries gather?
Grey tides slurp the red rocks
promising
the salt-dusted early whorls
shall be held in the hand as labour’s solace;
eroded fingerprints, lost seven-years’ skin.

 

Page(s) 4

Back to top