Steve Ely

Force eight from Lundy and the Irish Sea
in the dark moon of the solstice.
Alarmed awake at midnight, sleet slashing
across the window glass, blurring the street-lit world.
Packing the van in drenched Jack Pyke:
Lazerlight lamp-kit, slip-leads, dogs.
The long drive east to the ditch-cut flatlands.
Sleet strafing down. Wind howling in the hawthorns.
Shivering long-dogs, ears erect. The thousand foot
halogen beam. Green-eyes in hedge-bottoms.
Transfixed conies. Dogs running down the beam.
Conies dangling in the Deben double V.
Back to the van. Bag the necked and bladdered conies.
Towel and box the dogs. Peel off the drenched Jack Pyke.
The cold drive home in the dark moon of the solstice,
sleet slurring the view through the wiping-windscreen,
blurring the headlamped world.
...

Little John's Well at Stubbs dried up
as limestone quarrying behind the scarp
progressively destroyed the water table.
Dry years, as earth-locked rain burrowed
and bored in the bones of Barnsdale, before breaking
to the light in a winter-wheat field,
east of the Ea Beck bridge. Soon, rags were tied
to streamside trees and silver sown
in the muck's bright mirror. An underground
tradition, like midrash or the cult of saints,
bubbling forth like a rolling boil:
one harrowing hell with the corpse
of Moses, under the guns of Randi
and Dawkins, the canons of the Church.
...

All the world is sleeping - hush!
Four rivers of Eden;
Hiddekel, Pison, Gihon, Euphrates.
Adamu's garden, a woman picking fruit
in the cool of evening,
unfathomed darkness of stars.

Four rivers of Al Jazirah;
Colap, Kharbur, Al Furat, Nahr Dijla.
Ashurbanipal's garden, orchard and well,
maiden awaiting her lover's sweet song.
Did he arrive? Shrikes are hunting
through the olive groves, spearing
nightingales on branches.

Jahannam's four rivers;
salt-tears, urine, diarrhoea, blood.
Zeki Bay's garden of knives.
Women cooking grass. Children
licking moisture from stones.
...

Cutting in the cane fields
or hacking back scrub,
it was something we were used to:
after all, we were farmers.

We'd gather every morning
before setting out,
then cutting all day
in the jungle and marshes.

We'd come back exhausted,
well worthy of beer
and brochettes. Our wives
turned their backs in bed.

In those days was beef
and ribsteak in plenty.
We bore the knives ourselves:
slaughtering, jointing.

We feasted like the elegant kings
to whom were given
such bloody instructions
they jumped to the life to come.
...

Yes, I remember Fasayil
the dirt-track's hanging gate
a shanty of tents and mud-brick shacks
annexed to the Jewish State.

Melon fields of blinding light
and sentried ranks of palms,
Tomer's barbed-wire cash-crops,
Fasayil's destitute farms.

The drudgery of those melon fields
was relieved by the company
of my smiling Bedouin workmates
exiled and refugee.

Yet I refused an invitation
to dine with them in their homes,
not because the Arabs will eat your heart
and make bread with your bones,

but because a Brooklyn accent
said this is the West Bank guys
and those that eat with Arabs
are terrorists and spies.

Shabbat shalom on Tomer
grilled steaks and Maccabi beer
‘Dance Rock' and the Kids from Fame,
Sharon and Shamir.

Yes, I remember Fasayil
where I learned good men are meek,
and collude with power against the poor,
the dispossessed and weak.
...

Wycliffe's words and Langland's gave the Englisc
back their tongue. Manor french and church latin,
cut-off in the throat, battening behind
the buttresses of keeps and cathedrals,
parsing and declining. Johon Schepe
proclaims his hedgerow gospel, singing
from the furze like a yellowhammer:
Johan the Mullere hath ygrounde smal, smal, smal.
The Kynges sone of hevene schal pay for al.
Be war or ye be wo; Knoweth your freend
fro your foo. Haveth ynow, and seith ‘Hoo!'
There were no lords in Eden's commune.
Scythes sharpened on whetstones, gente non sancta.
War will follow the Word.
...