Hymn of the Haar

The path here over winter grew

With wild madder and restharrow

I came to tread another in

At the end of spring

I walk my miseries here on a leash The strait of dover

A silver verisimilar Damascun Road The sea wrack bore

Just after noon

A boy in the shape of a balloon

His jumper a Rashidun green

Came clear there was no rousing him So I wrote for him a name

Before the police came

To tarpaulin and erase

The evidence

Crisis to crisis

Life needn’t be like this

Or must it and must I

Be oblivious nor ask why

Just to hear the hymn of the haar Or haul-away to harbour?

Easterlies at shakespeare cliff Provoking the precipice

Here come the lee waves Shuddering the neck of bluff Enough delusion

My crop will fail

The scansion of the spindrift Binds me to the metre of despair

Crisis to crisis

Life once wasn’t like this Or was it and was i

Too delirious to realise

Or to hear the hymn of the haar And haul-away to harbour?

The shadow needs the light

To keep it’s void in sight

The left wing needs the right To keep the beast in flight

Skylark to bugloss to selfheal

To cormorant to samphire to plover

No bluebird flies over

Here in the hymn of the haar

As we haul-away to harbour

Or where the voices just too loud today To let you tell anybody

Or back across the barr them pray

Oft him anhaga are gebideð