Whittington Tump Poem by Jack Oates

Plough on;
over acre, under edge,
scratched by wren twitched thickets -
hawthorns smite and curse;
I smudge the earth between
the sedge struck furrows.

Midden stuck, my gurry beat,
as stick on rock
or rock on bone,
urges my sapping feet
up and up toward the crown,
and down through time.

And yet, so weak the tap;
the ear strains to cleave
the chink of yoke between the clods
or clang of smelt beneath the pound
from the clatter of the rail
that rents the ham below the peak.

Burrow down the barrow
until, through toil, the soil secretes
the flints of fates collided.
Lost beneath the frosts and dusts
that coat the poacher’s boots.

These petty pawns, these gaunt troops,
guardians of the hidden score,
graunched from bone and flesh,
packed under crook, lie listless.

No hand to hold the tiller,
or steer the spits beneath the river
where tales of yore froth among the wake
and eddy in the oxbow
beside the gently rustled leas.

And so to brow, then cap;
chestnut hatted hidden yarn,
tallow spent and wick slow burnt,
wax poured down through canals,
to marrow munched into the earth –
no more ferried bales.

Verdant vale,
stripped of loam and loke,
now sped along with silica,
reclaimed those sorrows,
potted ash and dust and seed
and grew a new millennia;
left this ground cidevant.
Left this wounded pile to lye.