Homesick by Irena Szirtes

 They are there,

   yet here: spiralling

        through my DNA,

   tangled with

capillaries, bulking

       unbidden as

   I close my eyes: Howgills.

Hunkered, heaped among dreams,

they grafted drystone walls

in me, and bleating ewes,

  crows on dry-wool carrion.

     I sense their reach again, and

silence vast as groundwater

soaks fell upon fell, steeping me

       with stillest joy in

     deep disordered pain.

Bracken sparks red through pathways

of my mind, blind scree soul-slides,

ewe bleats tremble through the dark,

faint, of steep sides and thin moons,

but I hear them.

               Slopes dip and dance,

        dreams hang in drizzle

                   and I spiral

        into sleep

              in the navel of

                    the night-violet

            of Wainwright’s

                       sleeping herd.