For bedding, sheep’s wool picked off barbed wire
or feathers plucked from mountain roads
or moss skimmed from rocks with a fleck of shale,
all to make a soft landing, a nest,
for what we’ll set down in a minute there
that I found, out looking for wild cyclamen
in the twitch grass and winter scutch
and rushes by my door.
All morning I’ve been cradling it
as if its heartbeat clattered on my palm,
but it comes time to lay it down
this small thing composed
of lit space and black ink,
its four letters like fleece-lined limbs,
an ‘o’ that is like a breath of air
or a hole through which a world
might be threaded for mending
by an oh-so-hopeful hand.
And what then but to sway it gently,
sing it a carol of silver and gold,
tell it to hush because all will be well,
that next year will weigh lighter on us,
that we’ll watch over it, night and day,
so it, love, will be safe.
Vona Groarke’s latest, 14th, book Woman of Winter, (a contemporary setting of ‘The Lament of the Hag of Beare’) was published in 2023 by Gallery Books, with drawings by Isobel Nolan. She is the current Writer in Residence at St John’s College, Cambridge.
or feathers plucked from mountain roads
or moss skimmed from rocks with a fleck of shale,
all to make a soft landing, a nest,
for what we’ll set down in a minute there
that I found, out looking for wild cyclamen
in the twitch grass and winter scutch
and rushes by my door.
All morning I’ve been cradling it
as if its heartbeat clattered on my palm,
but it comes time to lay it down
this small thing composed
of lit space and black ink,
its four letters like fleece-lined limbs,
an ‘o’ that is like a breath of air
or a hole through which a world
might be threaded for mending
by an oh-so-hopeful hand.
And what then but to sway it gently,
sing it a carol of silver and gold,
tell it to hush because all will be well,
that next year will weigh lighter on us,
that we’ll watch over it, night and day,
so it, love, will be safe.
Vona Groarke’s latest, 14th, book Woman of Winter, (a contemporary setting of ‘The Lament of the Hag of Beare’) was published in 2023 by Gallery Books, with drawings by Isobel Nolan. She is the current Writer in Residence at St John’s College, Cambridge.
