IMPROVISATIONS ON THE THEME OF
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AS ENGLAND
1. Finding Words
Serendipity:
there is a jewel in
the river’s dark trench,
a leyline of force
like a netted fish
tangled in meshes.
Our language is like
a quarry of stone,
the buried bones
in the country’s soil.
A cypher, a torch,
in the vaulted gorge
of a naked nerve.
In the mother tongue
a chamber of sound,
a voltage of words.
An inheritance.
So the old bequest,
and from the earth’s flesh
is softly unsheathed
the brittle and eroded
bone of England.
2. The Rewards
Infiltrations
of the green kingdom.
Militant conquests,
the herald and parade
regaled with trappings,
the coiled scrolls’ vegetal
fretwork of calligraphy.
Again the life we have
is vanquished. Again
we are strengthened in
the long assault.
Again the fouled lair
and the addled caste
profusing.
3. Not to Ring the Bell Backward
There is no funeral for
the hackneyed paradigm;
no belfry tolls the loss
of what cannot be revived,
only present failure
to wield the plangent
cry. Sanctity held
in abeyance. The conch
vacant of echoes.
The great war-horse drawn
by a pit pony
to the knacker’s yard.