Part 5 (2/2)

The Other Side

I.

Thigh-deep in sedge and marigolds, a neighbour laid his shadow on the stream, vouching 'It's as poor as Lazarus, that ground,'

and brushed away among the shaken leaf.a.ge.

I lay where his lea sloped to meet our fallow, nested on moss and rushes, my ear swallowing his fabulous, biblical dismissal, that tongue of chosen people.

When he would stand like that on the other side, white-haired, swinging his blackthorn at the marsh weeds, he prophesied above our scraggy acres, then turned away towards his promised furrows on the hill, a wake of pollen drifting to our bank, next season's tares.

II.

For days we would rehea.r.s.e each patriarchal dictum: Lazarus, the Pharaoh, Solomon and David and Goliath rolled magnificently, like loads of hay too big for our small lanes, or faltered on a rut 'Your side of the house, I believe, hardly rule by the Book at all.'

His brain was a whitewashed kitchen hung with texts, swept tidy as the body o' the kirk.

III.

Then sometimes when the rosary was dragging mournfully on in the kitchen we would hear his step round the gable though not until after the litany would the knock come to the door and the casual whistle strike up on the doorstep. 'A right-looking night,'

he might say, 'I was dandering by and says I, I might as well call.'

But now I stand behind him in the dark yard, in the moan of prayers.

He puts a hand in a pocket or taps a little tune with the blackthorn shyly, as if he were party to lovemaking or a stranger's weeping.

Should I slip away, I wonder, or go up and touch his shoulder and talk about the weather or the price of gra.s.s-seed?

Tinder (from A Northern h.o.a.rd)

We picked flints,

Pale and dirt-veined, So small finger and thumb Ached around them; Cold beads of history and home We fingered, a cave-mouth flame Of leaf and stick Trembling at the mind's wick.

We clicked stone on stone That sparked a weak flame-pollen And failed, our knuckle joints Striking as often as the flints.

What did we know then Of tinder, charred linen and iron, Huddled at dusk in a ring, Our fists shut, our hope shrunken?

What could strike a blaze From our dead igneous days?

Now we squat on cold cinder, Red-eyed, after the flames' soft thunder And our thoughts settle like ash.

We face the tundra's whistling brush With new history, flint and iron, Cast-offs, sc.r.a.ps, nail, canine.

The Tollund Man

I.

Some day I will go to Aarhus To see his peat-brown head, The mild pods of his eyelids, His pointed skin cap.

In the flat country nearby Where they dug him out, His last gruel of winter seeds Caked in his stomach, Naked except for The cap, noose and girdle, I will stand a long time.

Bridegroom to the G.o.ddess, She tightened her torc on him And opened her fen, Those dark juices working Him to a saint's kept body, Trove of the turfcutters'

Honeycombed workings.

Now his stained face Reposes at Aarhus.

II.

I could risk blasphemy, Consecrate the cauldron bog Our holy ground and pray Him to make germinate The scattered, ambushed Flesh of labourers, Stockinged corpses Laid out in the farmyards, Tell-tale skin and teeth Flecking the sleepers Of four young brothers, trailed For miles along the lines.

III.

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