Curl unfurl
a girl of ash paths
inhabits
her
leaf-blown body
stalked by gen-
erations
nations notions
of implanted fear
reach strain
test the cliff behind
the cliff-face
spider race inside
the bone-house
balancing china
bowls like skulls
judder stutter putter
he plucks cobweb
strings of a lyre
croaks for the thin wraiths
in the forest
behind the eyes
jaw stretch lip husk
retch rust and reek
how do we
get used
to this?
THE MAKING OF A WALKING MORT
These walking morts be not married. These for their unhappy years doth go as a autem-mort, and will say their husbands died either at Newhaven, Ireland, or in some service of the Prince…
Thomas Harman, ‘A Caveat for Common Cursitors’, (1566).
It begins at daybreak with a corn dolly dancing on the cloth of gold
embroidered with threads of birdsong, their bodies bursting from bushes
then settling like anxious flakes of ash further along the plough lines.
The Oak Fair in full swing, the May-Maid will be forever remembren
the day she was a queen, with the stook-deer racing boundary stones
like a frisk-mage, tail alight, carrying the morrow’s foredooms
of militiamen, under orders, erecting fences to tame the wilds,
to wall us out of our livings, erase the village, turf us into Bethlam.
Parcelling England for productivity, along lines of private progress,
how ale and blood will stain the grass when tempers spark
over eatwell boards, over grievances of forced evictions.
What kind of commonweal did our poor fella’s kill for?
So a bloke with a squint and wort on his snout can charge us at the gate
counting us in and clicking us out, keeping the tally straight.
Watch the lord’s herd drift into tree shade, the long languid stare
drinking the estate, the wobble of a wire under the weight of trespass
and I thought it possible to imagine another version, to recognise it
like a long-lost friend from a previous existence
or the burr of a childhood dream of an apple which, once bitten,
tasted so sweet it couldn’t be anything but the soul.