Part 9 (2/2)

Diodorus Siculus confessed His gradual ease among the likes of this: Murdered, forgotten, nameless, terrible Beheaded girl, outstaring axe And beatification, outstaring What had begun to feel like reverence.

Kins.h.i.+p

I.

Kinned by hieroglyphic peat on a spreadfield to the strangled victim, the love-nest in the bracken, I step through origins like a dog turning its memories of wilderness on the kitchen mat: the bog floor shakes, water cheeps and lisps as I walk down rushes and heather.

I love this turf-face, its black incisions, the cooped secrets of process and ritual; I love the spring off the ground, each bank a gallows drop, each open pool the unstopped mouth of an urn, a moon-drinker, not to be sounded by the naked eye.

II.

Quagmire, swampland, mora.s.s: the slime kingdoms, domains of the cold-blooded, of mud pads and dirtied eggs.

But bog meaning soft, the fall of windless rain, pupil of amber.

Ruminant ground, digestion of mollusc and seed-pod, deep pollen-bin.

Earth-pantry, bone-vault, sun-bank, embalmer of votive goods and sabred fugitives.

Insatiable bride.

Sword-swallower, casket, midden, floe of history.

Ground that will strip its dark side, nesting ground, outback of my mind.

III.

I found a turf-spade hidden under bracken, laid flat, and overgrown with a green fog.

As I raised it the soft lips of the growth muttered and split, a tawny rut opening at my feet like a shed skin, the shaft wettish as I sank it upright and beginning to steam in the sun.

And now they have twinned that obelisk: among the stones, under a bearded cairn a love-nest is disturbed, catkin and bog-cotton tremble as they raise up the cloven oak-limb.

I stand at the edge of centuries facing a G.o.ddess.

IV.

This centre holds and spreads, sump and seedbed, a bag of waters and a melting grave.

The mothers of autumn sour and sink, ferments of husk and leaf deepen their ochres.

Mosses come to a head, heather unseeds, brackens deposit their bronze.

This is the vowel of earth dreaming its root in flowers and snow, mutation of weathers and seasons, a windfall composing the floor it rots into.

I grew out of all this like a weeping willow inclined to the appet.i.tes of gravity.

V.

The hand-carved felloes of the turf-cart wheels buried in a litter of turf mould, the cupid's bow of the tail-board, the socketed lips of the cribs: I deified the man who rode there, G.o.d of the waggon, the hearth-feeder.

I was his privileged attendant, a bearer of bread and drink, the squire of his circuits.

When summer died and wives forsook the fields we were abroad, saluted, given right-of-way.

Watch our progress down the haw-lit hedges, my manly pride when he speaks to me.

VI.

And you, Tacitus, observe how I make my grove on an old crannog piled by the fearful dead: a desolate peace.

Our mother ground is sour with the blood of her faithful, they lie gargling in her sacred heart as the legions stare from the ramparts.

Come back to this 'island of the ocean'

where nothing will suffice.

Read the inhumed faces of casualty and victim; report us fairly, how we slaughter for the common good and shave the heads of the notorious, how the G.o.ddess swallows our love and terror.

Act of Union

I.

Tonight, a first movement, a pulse, As if the rain in bogland gathered head To slip and flood: a bog-burst, A gash breaking open the ferny bed.

Your back is a firm line of eastern coast And arms and legs are thrown Beyond your gradual hills. I caress The heaving province where our past has grown.

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