continued
III
Corfe
God keep the Hollow Land from all wrong !
God keep the Hollow Land going strong!
A song a boy made in a girl
Brother and sister in a car
Over the flint, upon the turf
Beside the crook-backed angry thorn
Under the gulls, above the dead
To where the light made the grass glass.
Until they came to the world's end
The sea below and under them
The gulls above and over them
And through the thunder and the wailing
Sun full of wings was over them
In a glass world made out of grass.
'God keep the Hollow Land from all wrong !
God keep the Hollow Land going strong !
Curl horns and fleeces, straighten trees,
Multiply lobsters, assemble bees.
Give it to us for ever, take our hints
Knot up its roads for us, sharpen its flints,
Pour the wind into it, the thick sea rain,
Blot out the landscape and destroy the train.
Turn back our folk from it, we hate the lot
Turn the American and turn the Scot ;
Take unpropitious the turf, the dust
If the sea doesn't get'em then the cattle must.
Make many slugs where the stranger goes
Better than barbed wire the briar rose ;
Swarm on the down-tops the flint mens' hosts
Taboo the barrows, encourage ghosts.
Arm the rabbits with tigers' teeth
Serpents shoot from the soil beneath
By pain in belly and foot and mouth
Keep them out of our sacred south.'
Robin Blaser
Vancouver,B.C.
August, 1978
from Imanginary Letters by
Mary Butts
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