You Brave Old Land

You brave old land that stands so firm,
you fortress against time.
You rocks and stone so long before me.
You green ivy so metallic in your grip.
You mighty oak, mightier still in the root,
that there we are entire.

You brave old land.
Your service to industry
which also destroys you.
You copper and iron,
the smelt and the casting: the transference.
And in valleys lost beneath woodland,
chimneys haunt the moment
where once hunting knives were crafted,
yet still remind of clogged feet and a calling.
But you, the mountains, hold firm in your spell.
While the winds embrace you to renew you,
tufted grass and gorse, hawthorn and ash
are sculpted to better represent you.
The blanket rain-cloud drifts in to wrap you,
to feed the streams by which I too am fed:
always the cleansing.

You brave old land.
Your support of mankind
which also destroys you.
Yet for all the enclosure,
the wooden fence and the dry-stone wall,

each a beauty unto itself,
still you breathe and sing your song
and soothe with your poetics
deep in the fibre of me.

And you, you primrose and daffodil,
pale sunlight before the warmth has returned
to comfort muscle and soften wintry limbs,
that nod in confirmation
as keened winds carry last frosts
to the perpetual shadow of impregnable crags.

And you, you bigger hills,
devoured by heavy skies,
your elephant backs arched
against the chilling weightlessness
that I too might ascend to those profane heavens.

You silver seas and sudden showers.
You silent lakes, red soils and bracken banks.
I too grow alongside you,
to break the ice, to dive into still waters,
to thrust my hands into fertile loams
or to lay myself upon you in sweet dreams of forgetting.

The glacial cut, the tumbled moraine,
the grand sweeps and sudden falls which reflect my anguish.

Oh, you brave old land,
where you stand still,
I can always return
to confirm a permanence
where otherwise there is none.

The shadow which is patchwork ethereal.
The fields which are patchwork sustained.
The water currents, whirlpools and eddies:
psychic nerve-ends.
The brackish tarn,
black as oil that has found its break,
or the quicksilver of the tumbling brook.

This the joke of landscape.
The gull upon the plough furrow, mimicking oceans.
The raven fierce against the coming storm,
a tattered black rag screeching abbreviation.
The surfaces bending and breaking.
The buttress, gulley and chock-stone,
the snug valleys, the estuaries, the salt flats.
And then the ditches cut so straight
through this, the embroidery complete.

You northerlies which hew with ice,
you southerlies which brand with fire,
you westerlies which round with water.
You tricky easterlies which shake the jester's bells
and change face soon as wear it.

And then of human order,
a colder heart:
the crafted marble and limestone and granite,
the markers and tombstones
that we too might remain in this way,
that we might become the graven form of immortality.

But we have only our passion
to stand resolute yet temporary as any hillside cairn,
where no moss will grow
nor be gathered in the fall.
Passion, passion, that alone. That is all.

Oh, You teams of sporting men,
heraldic in your pageant:
your red and gold and blue.
You run in packs,
and while you run you laugh,
knowing but for the flying leather
and the clinging mud
that everything is as nothing.
And in that, is there not also sorrow?

And as I leave these hills,
I feel my soul touched with a yearning,
for they so engage me,
so enfold me.
And if I should sing their song,
might I not know better,
or at least be better created?

Of course she cried in blood and tears.
Of course she cried in blood and cares,
but, surely, was I not torn away,
born away through her from the solace of eternity?
The immortal thrall broken in the moment of birth.

Then perhaps there is no return?
And in that red and gold and blue,
I might come to pursue
more material a dream,
smug in its youth,
which, rather than the touch of the divine,
chooses the shiny button of touch.
So confident that there need be no reaching,
for always there is time
which might encase breast, soft, sublime,
yet temporal and so be untouched,
or lips, which although engorged by memory,
can but tittle-tattle to confirm the paucity.

Oh you, you who hold the rose to its moment of beauty,
who celebrates its crimson joy'
yet denies it its fall:
this dark secret love' you doth destroy.
Is nothing changed? Is that the all?
Then know this.
Love is greater than yourself.
It is in every moment before and after your conceits.
It cannot grow, for it is already full grown,
full size, full spectrum, indefinable,
shot out beyond time contained.

Love is complete, or else love is obsolete.

There are, of course, great rivers,
some greater than others,
yet all are bound to the sea.
But you, you brave old land,
you stand so firm, indomitable and grand.