Poem
Peter Riley
HARECOPS
HARECOPS
HARECOPS
Grace and honour descend the hill, seekingthe human heart, brushing aside the wasps
and folding that knotted academy in clay hands . . .
Our front window looked out two miles over
pasture and woodland thick with the sheen of equity
that without a word edits thought against
greed and fantasy, pale emblems shelved
at the field edges, fading nightly into dream. We held
onto this like grim death, we sank our trust in
curtained arbours in a stone house and formed a child,
who mothered us through opening Sundays.
And two miles away was a great ridge, a dark
green mass strung with white stone walls,
at its highest point an ancestral grave, a circular
fate capsule of long stones. It was always there
though the light came and failed. At night the ridge
was a grey sleeper against the sky and white messages
flew into the front window, pierced the night and
focused the day, calling to the mind, calling
to the cusped heart, calling together
the kind forces that hunt us to death.
© 2007, Peter Riley
From: The Day\'s Final Balance: Uncollected Writings 1965-2006
Publisher: Shearsman Books, Exeter
From: The Day\'s Final Balance: Uncollected Writings 1965-2006
Publisher: Shearsman Books, Exeter
Peter Riley
(United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1940)
Peter Riley must now count as one of our ‘senior poets’, with a large back-catalogue of publications, but he occupies a strange position in contemporary English letters, due in no small part to the sheer range of his work. In some respects, this range, and his interests, rule him out of contention for a number of critics, and it would be fair to say that he probably annoys as many critics from ...
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HARECOPS
Grace and honour descend the hill, seekingthe human heart, brushing aside the wasps
and folding that knotted academy in clay hands . . .
Our front window looked out two miles over
pasture and woodland thick with the sheen of equity
that without a word edits thought against
greed and fantasy, pale emblems shelved
at the field edges, fading nightly into dream. We held
onto this like grim death, we sank our trust in
curtained arbours in a stone house and formed a child,
who mothered us through opening Sundays.
And two miles away was a great ridge, a dark
green mass strung with white stone walls,
at its highest point an ancestral grave, a circular
fate capsule of long stones. It was always there
though the light came and failed. At night the ridge
was a grey sleeper against the sky and white messages
flew into the front window, pierced the night and
focused the day, calling to the mind, calling
to the cusped heart, calling together
the kind forces that hunt us to death.
From: The Day\'s Final Balance: Uncollected Writings 1965-2006
HARECOPS
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