New Territories
I
They have cut back the reeds
for a quarter of a mile; the air
lies scrubbed with coconut breezes
from the gorse, the road here
yellow with its spiky balm
like memory pricking the palm.
They are clearing new territories,
maps redrawn as if going back to when
the world was a work in progress
so we might find some freedom in the scene
as each step sinks through scythe-work
down to what the stalk bed covered over.
Only wild daffodils remain, old life-markers
in ones and twos invulnerable as clover.
II
The reeds dry in bundles on the ground
like top-knots on a row of scalps
in the warm afternoon after the battle.
I suddenly see myself exhilarant,
alive in all the inner places now,
opened to a penetrating glory:
Aeneas coursing his waterways,
whole new Romes being offered…
It’s more like badly translated Ulysses
Stood in a ditch talking to the dead,
but they tell him where to go; these marshes
let you in, then they belong to the birds.
III
Some forgotten tracks no longer flood
just find their end: thus-far-and-no-furthers
where the elements and we are led,
each born reflected in the other;
land condensing and dissolving underfoot
bringing us back in time to be renewed.
Perhaps to watch in places made like this
is to partake enough: trying to guess
the names of trees out loud, as one redress
for sorrow, works as worship, more or less.
The reeds stand still guarding the horizon,
protect the paths that lead to the heron,
maintain their silent aspirations,
draw their breath from the sun.
IV
The rushes too were culled to ankle height;
but one big bull missed in the bed
is already busy re-seeding the night
with a spring wind in his head.
Here is where the boy has always been:
crossing boardwalks carrying his shoes,
sat on a caulked plank pulled from the fen
like a piece of Charon’s lost canoe.
A bear might come to him out of the forest,
deer might come to him under the moon,
telling him tales of what he lost
from long years being inhuman.
He gathers these thoughts and puts them
on the grass so the earth soaks them in;
then sits not moving, his story resumed,
waiting for a harvest to begin.