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Vince Gilbert

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Off Purbeck

(for my mother)

I’d scrambled, trod those quarried cliffs all childhood
- Dancing, Seacombe, Scratch Arse, Tilly Whim -
and Ragged Rocks, where the Alexandrovna
shattered, and the storm stripped coffin-elms
leaf-bare, salt-burdened, that whole summer long.

I’d clambered down the quarr-face, where my teacher
slipped, fell, flew, spun, struck, broke, drowned -
myself kicked whelks off pitted rocks,
child-heedless of their clutch, gasp, as the swell
sucked feet, plucked joints, scoured scum on gibbet-cranes:

heard all the while insistent waters hissing
at the upstart anticline, ‘We made you,
laid you down in lime, in bones, in carbonates,
the Freestone, Spangle, Cap, and Listy Bed,
imprisoned ammonites as whorled death tokens,

ripped soft solids with our liquid teeth; have fed
our envies with detritus from the wrecks,
the rocks, the quarry-holes, the fallers; for
we are the jealous waters:  we were first
upon this earth, and we reclaim our own’.

At bay, abused, bruised, bullied, but the land
endures.  The sea deceives:  I now defy it;
launch, stand out, the link to birthground breaking,see
those ravaged cliffs still stand, pocked, mutilated,
resistant still, protecting clay, soil, sand.

And you are home again from hospital
at last, to count the insufficient oxygen,
each grudging molecule, each atom, till
they stop.  Your features jut, at last,
clear, obdurate, beyond the sea-worked oolite.

Page(s) 16

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