The poem, with just a little bit of grammatical stretch, is written in a single sentence. It is one of three written in the same rather jogging metre in 2021/22. The others are "Cornish Gorse" posted here on 24 October 2023, and "If You Want to Know What Sea Is" posted here on 25 November 2023.
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The cliffs are shook, the thyme is shaken,
The roar is such to waken the Kraken;
Dank mist like suds is flung from the sea,
Greyly streaming over stack and scree;
Sharp rain is piercing the grass and sedge
Clinging blackly to slab and ledge,
And the wind, the wind! like a searing flail
Scourges the cliffs and moors with hail:
Carn Euny, stark on its rising breast,
Has a view all ways, north-east, south-west,
But compass-open there’s no reprieve
From the air’s freeze, the wind’s heave;
Here the Cornovii built their huts,
Granite and thatch, their paths all ruts,
And wind-swept, damp-rotted, scratched their fields
For oats’ and barley’s skinny yields;
Some bony cattle, some goats and sheep
Graze the moorland with its constant creep
Of heather, bracken and yellow-eyed gorse
Grabbing ground with bullying force:
Arthritic, coughing, weather-scarred men
Hack the furze from the field walls again;
Their women, bent-backed, carry and cook,
The children learning by help and look:
And has much changed through centuries’ reach
(Some offer nostrums, others preach)?
But look, Penzance – harsh-granite-grey –
Hunkers as a rain squall swamps the bay,
Glinting grimly through the solid pour
Battering gutters with its ear-split roar;
The sea, the rain-drenched wind, the salt
Govern life and health from birth to vault;
And soon or late, folk to the grave
Crumple and fall like a stumbling wave,
Then fogou or chapel, barrow or ditch,
Cover their bodies like a stiffened flitch,
And as their forbears on the damp-sogged moor
They’ll melt by centuries to a slick of ore;
And unless those cairns are portals true
To That that’s Eternal and Ever New
They’ll lie unceasing under drizzle and fog,
Rain-spray and run-off turning ground to quag;
Horizoned, the sea will heave and will groan,
Wind-whipped, and cloud bursts will race and drone,
And none shall ever be dry in the earth,
The soil a place of death and dearth:
But think: the Eternal with a mighty Harrump
(Like the Pendeen foghorn’s ear-wrecking Trump)
Will call all from the grave to the Judgement Seat
Where no-one might argue, beg or bleat,
And then all that’s left will be the moors and cliffs,
The sea and wind with their binary riffs,
Unlived-in, unthought-of, bereft, estranged,
Changing, changing, and thus unchanged.
====================
© November – December 2022
------------
The cliffs are shook, the thyme is shaken,
The roar is such to waken the Kraken;
Dank mist like suds is flung from the sea,
Greyly streaming over stack and scree;
Sharp rain is piercing the grass and sedge
Clinging blackly to slab and ledge,
And the wind, the wind! like a searing flail
Scourges the cliffs and moors with hail:
Carn Euny, stark on its rising breast,
Has a view all ways, north-east, south-west,
But compass-open there’s no reprieve
From the air’s freeze, the wind’s heave;
Here the Cornovii built their huts,
Granite and thatch, their paths all ruts,
And wind-swept, damp-rotted, scratched their fields
For oats’ and barley’s skinny yields;
Some bony cattle, some goats and sheep
Graze the moorland with its constant creep
Of heather, bracken and yellow-eyed gorse
Grabbing ground with bullying force:
Arthritic, coughing, weather-scarred men
Hack the furze from the field walls again;
Their women, bent-backed, carry and cook,
The children learning by help and look:
And has much changed through centuries’ reach
(Some offer nostrums, others preach)?
But look, Penzance – harsh-granite-grey –
Hunkers as a rain squall swamps the bay,
Glinting grimly through the solid pour
Battering gutters with its ear-split roar;
The sea, the rain-drenched wind, the salt
Govern life and health from birth to vault;
And soon or late, folk to the grave
Crumple and fall like a stumbling wave,
Then fogou or chapel, barrow or ditch,
Cover their bodies like a stiffened flitch,
And as their forbears on the damp-sogged moor
They’ll melt by centuries to a slick of ore;
And unless those cairns are portals true
To That that’s Eternal and Ever New
They’ll lie unceasing under drizzle and fog,
Rain-spray and run-off turning ground to quag;
Horizoned, the sea will heave and will groan,
Wind-whipped, and cloud bursts will race and drone,
And none shall ever be dry in the earth,
The soil a place of death and dearth:
But think: the Eternal with a mighty Harrump
(Like the Pendeen foghorn’s ear-wrecking Trump)
Will call all from the grave to the Judgement Seat
Where no-one might argue, beg or bleat,
And then all that’s left will be the moors and cliffs,
The sea and wind with their binary riffs,
Unlived-in, unthought-of, bereft, estranged,
Changing, changing, and thus unchanged.
====================
© November – December 2022
