GLIMMERED PATHS
Beneath those clouds, that dark and glowering sky,
Lie and roll the high hills of home.
Beneath the bracken brown and sedge-sharp hills,
The grey and time-cracked waiting rocks.
Beneath the rocks the slumbered weight, the beds of coal and iron.
The slow seep, the echoed drip that always, always tastes of blood.
Beneath that blood, a fierce and endless joy and sorrow:
Souls and stars, swaying each along their own and glimmered paths.
Beyond the paths, a singing ark of life,
A soaring choir, a cast bell, a cave, a resolute remembering.
There, are turbulent silken seas, all the bones ground down to salt,
Worms turned eloquent: a sudden, unexpected glory.
I dream the drovers turn towards home, tallies marked,
Murmuring their loves, long and low.
Their secret green and hollow ways
Singing light and fireside.
Hard is any parting in winter.
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