Andrew Motion
Essex
What do I see in it?
Three years trying to forget it
leaves me exactly still
in its cradle of smug plough.
When I sleep I fall immediately
back to its slippery rim of marsh.
With a low horizon of masts
it hedges me in, one eye continually
opened to show my root coiled in your wound.
(Riding across country
the ground reared quietly,
splitting you from crown to jaw.
Two hours you bled into it
before they found you, and Essex
turned slowly, wanting more.)
England buckles towards those flats,
reduced to one fixed point
of memory. If I went back
I’d see nothing changed: hills
gathering above you for the final push;
a place inseparable from pain.
Page(s) 26-27
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