leaving a few sketchy, starlit scars
where the buried photos are
of children along the shore
taught to name the bumbling hunter above,
who leaps in his airless game
after map of bull or stag,
a trapezoid whose comers slowly move
through wastes of brutal fame,
the sad shoulders tugged
on the rack of space in opposite directions,
a blinking devolution
without a human face.
Selwyn Pritchard
The Last of England
i.m . John Clare 1973-1864
I remembered Pendle, strapped in, waiting to go,
the low eaves, steep slate roof, miles from the road
under Brown Clee and a smattering of snow.
Flakes floated in the kitchen as we stood
at the door, holding hands, Katie, Bu, and me,
the roar of the Teme undercutting a hanging wood
on the Hereford bank, windows forced by Autumn bluster,
snow cleanly carpeting flags worn by clod-hopping boots
which once thumped the steam bridge from Salop to Worcester.
At that confluence ofwaters where old shires met,
we hesitated, turned away in December dusk long ago,
as I recalled gratuitously in the hurtling jet
