What is blocking the heart of my country?
I walk in its verdant valleys, that dress the horizon.
I trace the twist and tumble of its streams and its rivers,
I stumble through its forests, ancient and knowing,
But cannot find the source.
At sea, I crouch in the conning tower as we sweep around this isle
Surveying subterranean roots of majestic cliffs for rock fall,
The dim sea bed for fault lines.
There is a suffocating malaise, a slimy bloom
It slips through nets refusing to be caught and spreads like fear
And the sun breaks, across the hills and sweeping downlands, solemn granite mountains
Pale marshes and the sandy flats, as the long shadow reaches.
I dream of the wind whining in the oak barn, lifting the loose straw,
And the gale smashing flotsam against the old seawall.
The slowing beat of the earth beneath us, as planets reel in distant galaxies
Has not yet silenced the Robin at my window, or the hum of bees on the lavender bush
But the sluggish pulse that chills the sun, and gathers cloud, is rattling bones
In the ivy covered churchyard, and causing the earth to moan.
