Cornwall

Radioactive granite. Hard rocks. Sharp coast.

This land breaks you down so you can live anew.

Blackbacked gulls and oystercatchers

Angel the winter beaches.

Bladderwrack and tangleweed

Wave brown in remotest coves.

Jagged rocks torn from the land lie tumbled

Amid seaweed and anemone,

Cormorants and shags stand, shivering on rocks,

Staring deep into the sea,

Nightwalkers’ country: a fish rises in a stream,

Drum-loud plop rippling in the still.

Dry sticks crackle. Something is moving

In the deep secretive wood.

Suddenly the sad cry of a rabbit

Pounced on by a fox.

A badger emerging from its sett

Raises its muzzle to the moon in homage.

The furious moon gallops down into the sea,

The dizzy earth turns over like a foetus in the womb.


The churning gull-stormed Atlantic is my own pulse.

Billows shatter against headlands,

Throw white foam-spouts into the air.

Morning sun paints rainbows in the salt drift,

Waves are blustering, breaking, besieging,

All fluttering flaking whirling white steam;

The sun’s reflection in the water

Is juddering disintegrating fire-flakes...


In the abandoned slate quarry

Saplings of ash, beech and willow have rooted;

Rusty deserted tramways and disused machinery,

Rusted wagons and winches lie around.

Half-hidden under ferns and wildflowers;

Slate-red, green and white- winks in the sun;

Jackdaws nest on ledges.

Buzzards and ravens fly overhead.

Purple orchids, hawkweed, thistles and sloe bushes

Thrive among spoil heaps.

God the hermit clenches in the granite,

The desolate moorland, the bogs, the buttercup meadows.

The harsh fanatical voice of a Celtic saint,

Uttering terror and peace.

Look at the isolated farms, shouldering the wind,

Confronting the sea and its dead,

Ricks crow-and-jackdaw-stewarded,

Stonechats frickering over gorse-thatched greystone walls.

Megalithic stone circles dance under the sky,

Summer sea-mists curl up to slumber

In obsolete quarries and mines.

Can you hear , when the tide is running,

The bells and voices of drowned Lyonesse?


Here the Celtic missionaries walked, ragged and wild,

Preaching and healing like the wind,

Tasting the blown sea-salt on their tongues

As they shook their staves in righteous anger.

Their gnarled fists christened granite,

Raising baptisteries over heathen springs and wells.

At night, they lay down with the sheep for warmth;

At dawn, they sang as they bathed in cold rivers.

They grew old and gnarled like winter elms and thorns,

And fell, at last, gladly into God’s hands,

Absorbed into the moors’ endless prayer.


The lights of Bodmin Moor are the milkwort and lichens,

Skylarks’ wings and wide skies,

A realm more dangerous and exquisite,

Where birds sing themselves into ecstasy,

A chalice uplifted swirling with murmurous spirits.

Heal yourself by clinging to granite,

Shed sickness into the immovable incorruptible stone,

Among the wastes and ruins, forced to face yourself,

Initiated into humility and courage

By Neolithic stillness.

The sun settles on your face

Like a dragonfly on a stream.

Thin earth drizzled over granite.

Grass. Rock. Wind. Marsh. Bog.

Uncanny horses appear out of nowhere,

Charging into the cold air, manes blazing, heads high,

Dragon-pennants of breath streaming

From strained nostrils and shining backs;

They gallop across their winter underworld,

Lift their sovereign heads in piercing neighs.

Faint eerie murmurings hang over the stone circles,

Voices of the Beaker People who saw

The sun spinning off the summer tors

And the moon swimming like a sea-monster

Through their dreams, as they danced

To hold the sky up...


Shipwrecks’ whale skeletons litter the bays.

Desolate waves boom in caverns, bite at rocks.

Crabs and lobsters pick out drowned sailors’ eyes,

Tear the flesh from their limbs.

Along bare cliffs only winter gorse blooms.

Everything is crumbling away

Into that vast invincible sadness

Under the shrunken phantom sun.

Seals gaze out to sea with the eyes

Of drowned souls, beyond hope or prayer.


White china clay waste pyramids gleam

In the sun, reflecting the sea off the clouds,

And the whole hill-range shivers with the windy light,

Silver, blue and gold, and sometimes magenta...

Here, you are death’s astronaut, cut off

In white space, belittled yet exalted,

Turned into a ghost, until sunset

Crimsons the hills, lava streaming into darkness.