LANDSCAPES Poems
by Bob Devereux
I
Spread the map out flat.
There are no hills here;
This is a levelled land,
Levelled by water,
Tamed by man.
Dutch geometry;
Drained land;
Veined with ditches,
Saved from fishes,
Given to grain.
When the world was a
wild place
And men survived by
cunning,
The trapper of birds
And the catcher of eels
Were kings with the heron.
They sifted the mud for elvers,
Tended their limed
twigs;
Could
spear fish.
They were the hunters,
Plundering nests for
Eggs and
young birds.
Cattle and corn were
Other
men’s work.
They knew their craft;
Weaving the willow
wands,
Could make traps;
And they were happy to
walk on water.
Then Vermuyden came,
Scarring the face of the fen,
Carving his name.
The hunters saw the old life drain away,
Oozing through new wounds
Cut by prisoners of war.
Dutch engineers made
gold from dross.
Dykes netted the land
where the wilderness was.
Now fish, fowl and man
must follow their course.
II
Fixed to focus,
A speck in space,
The kestrel
Hovers over the young corn
Waiting his moment.
Everywhere
The silver-tongued skylarks
Sing as they climb,
Warbling up and down
Their ladders of air,
Looking for high notes.
A crow flaps by in his black rags.
The blue dome is filled with feathered life.
III
Before the taming,
Out of the bubbling
broth,
Out of the soup of
unknowing,
Wading waist-deep,
Seekers came,
Fighting the fever,
Bent by the weather.
They built their huts of
mud and wattle . . .
And they prayed.
Truth only comes to men
in solitude,
In holy silence.
Only the bitterns
booming in the sedge,
And the scrrech of the night owl
In the reed beds
Troubled their peace,
As they tilled and built
to God,
Busy as bees
In
those monastery gardens.
Great were the churches
that grew from the black peat.
Great Abbeys;
Acres of honeyed stone
Climbing to Heaven.
Their vaulted roofs were sweet
With plainsong,
Their cloisters filled with murmuring.
And the poor people
Brought plovers’ eggs
and honeycomb
And silver pike for
Abbot’s high table.
And the Heron King
Placed his fish in a
circle
On the bank,
And flew into the setting sun.
And the poor people
Brought oak gall and
goose feather quills
For
the monks to write the Scriptures.
(This movement also incorporates vv. 7-10 of Psalm 19 in Latin)
IV
Five swans
Flying in from the tundra,
Flying in from Siberia,
From the Kara Sea.
They carry the cold wind
From the Caucasus
On their snowy white backs.
The bell-beat of their wings
Is bringing them home
To winter pastures.
Grey armies of geese
Fly in from the North.
And greylag and pinkfoot
Come whiffling down
Out of a winter sky,
Flooding the fen with strange sound.
V
Build another step.
Good earth is blowing in
the wind;
Slowly our land erodes.
Curtains drawn across
the sun;
Thick mist blankets the
fen;
Her ghosts are stirring.
When there were still
hedges,
And wrens to nest in
them,
Our horses ploughed a
straight furrow;
Then fields were fields.
They drove geese to
market from here.
Black white, black white,
The lapwings fly.
Black white, black white,
In unison.
Black white, black white,
They wheel and turn.
So many sunsets
The heron hunts with
hunched shoulders.
They harness steam to
pump the water.
The night has a heart
beat.
The long arc of the
horizon circles all.
So much sky,
So full of light.
The sun’s reflection dazzles
In every dyke.
Gold in the grain,
And in the pollen.
In every dyke
The sun’s reflection.
So much sky,
And all aflame.
The sun’s reflection dazzles.
Gold in the grain.
© Bob Devereux 1987