Maiden Castle

In 1975 I wandered through the gate; my aesthetic sensibilities now tuned to a better understanding of the romance England could conjure. The old England of memory and myth, barely tangible; its cultural warp and weft now seemingly faded beyond recognition.

I turned to Janet and Colin Bord’s Mysterious Britain for guidance. Scattered across the pages of a Paladin paperback their revelations fed my yearnings, and mapped-out a course I follow still, some forty-odd years later. The book was more than a guide to me, it became a topographical wants list. Over time, driven by an irresistible imperative, I visited those places, and still do.

And so, on a blustery mid-June morning, I open-out the old Ordnance Survey One Inch map, and search for the reference. And there it lies, on Dorchester’s fringe. At once a brooding scar, a human re-alignment of nature’s ancient bed, Maiden Castle.

Having cautiously circumvented Dorchester I embark upon a circuitous route to nowhere. All the while Maiden’s unattainable profile taunts me from a distant ridge. So near, and yet so far. Eventually we locate the track, passing-place narrow and pregnant with anticipation. I slow to give wide berth to a rider and smile at our shared acknowledgement. Her hand raised from the reigns; mine raised from the steering wheel.

I park the car and change into my walking boots. Standing for a moment to gain my spiritual bearing I glance at the tires of the car, then lift a foot to examine the sole of my boot. Each is whitewashed with chalk, each newly baptized in Dorset’s downland dust. I smile.

My father was here before me, transplanted to this place with no recollection of when or how. And now I stand with little understanding of what comes next. One foot before another, onward. And as we open the gate, our path climbing before us, the rider gives her horse full reign. To the thunder of hooves, a diminishing crescendo, we climb. Above us, imperceptible to the human eye, skylarks sing. We stand and peer, training our eyes on the invisible, ignoring the amoebas that taunt with their suggestions of form. And then we see her rise to join the throng, the elusive sisterhood that counterpoints our steps. Their gift, a scattered polyphony, borne on the wind for the fortunate to hear.

Through the folded tessellations of the western entrance we wend our way, upwards and inwards, ever cognizant of our forebears’ watchful gaze. It seems like a despoilment of sorts, a wanton act of intrusion on our behalf. We beg forgiveness, forbearance, and press our way onward. A tacit approval of sorts, divined from the land, settles our minds.

As we peak the ramparts I reel from an overwhelming spirit of place; that genius loci the English neo-romantics strove so diligently for. Mapped out before us is a landscape of another time, a landscape drafted by the diligent pen of Alan Sorrell. Boyhood illustration made real in the permanence of piled chalk and folded loam. An overwhelming flight of sensory bewilderment. A sight. A sense. An immersion.

The day has blessed us with benign warmth and a stirring breeze, contrary to all forecasts of torrent and tempest. And so we stride on in anticipation of an exhilarating circumnavigation of the castle’s one-and-a-half mile circumference. In the distance we see a seated couple, and shamefully shrink from their presence, as if we only should enjoy this right to roam, this distant connection to those errant spirits of our past. As we pass, we smile, say “Hi”, and immediately atone.

They were nice” I say and feel the prick of conscience. Conjuring the grace to share this place, inwardly I acknowledge my guilt, and slowly feel its benevolent warmth; smug but suitably humbled.

As we walk on our steps are punctuated with the erratic flight of Small Copper butterflies, and the coral-red fire of Cinnabar moths. The first moth is a tiny revelation, the second just the same, and soon we realize they pepper the landscape like jewels cast from a reckless hand. We bend to take a closer look, and marvel in their beauty.

We pause to take photographs. Digital processing enables a curious transformation, from coloured snapshot to grainy monochrome, as if stolen from the pages of a Betjeman Shell Guide, focused through Mr. Piper’s discerning lens. The mobile phone, the living antithesis of this English idyll, kindly transports us to a nostalgic Metroland perception of the landscape, and somehow enables an enhanced way of seeing. A perceptive focus on lost detail, on altered realities, on a sense of place rid of the accursed sense of present time.

As we near the tortured undulations of the eastern entrance I think of Sir Mortimer Wheeler. Back in the susceptible mists of boyhood I harboured a string of romantic notions. I would be an architect, I would be a designer, or maybe, just maybe, I’d be an archaeologist. It was Sir Mortimer who sealed it for me. Although I was never to tread that path, nevertheless it was he who captured my imagination. Tweed jacket, aristocratic bearing, manicured moustache, the archetype was there, and if not my ambition, then certainly my imagination was steered by him.

Between 1934 and 1937 Wheeler, with his wife Tessa, excavated both the interior and the ramparts of the Castle. This was the first major investigation of the site, although Augustus Pitt-Rivers had been here before in the 19th century. With his prime focus on the eastern entrance Wheeler and his team uncovered, amongst other things, over fifty late iron-age burial sites. Time and other pressing objectives did not allow a full excavation of the cemetery, but we can assume that perhaps half of the burials remained undiscovered. Whilst many of the burials suggested no foul play, a number (around fourteen) evidenced violent deaths. From this Wheeler drew (now discredited) conclusions that this was in fact a war cemetery, and potential proof therefore of an overwhelming Roman attack.

The romantic notion of a Roman inundation fuelled my fascination and helped plant me firmly on the side of the iron-age incumbents. Forever one to follow a banner, from peasants to parliamentarians to Peterloo, I rallied to their distant cause; and a peculiar sense of solidarity surged through me still, as I looked down upon their resting places.

From this point, heading westward into the interior of the settlement, we find the low lying remnants of the Romano-British temple. A few scant courses of stone break the turf and suggest its once noble form. A native fusion of Celtic British and classical Roman religion, the temple was once testament to a hybrid paganism of the 4th century. I bend to place a hand on these stones, to seek a connection, a vertical ley-line to some underlying meaning. And then I realize he’s been here before me … the velvet archaeologist who digs where we dare not.

Wont is Dorset dialect for a mole. And there within the sacred inner sanctum of the temple he’s left his mark. Wonthills, several of them, punctuating that special place. I move to take a step and am forbidden. “No, it doesn’t seem right.” I pause and crouch once more. I sift through the soft riddled loam of the hill closest to me, black earth beneath my fingernails. Not daring to transgress this holy place, with one knee firmly planted on the ancient stone course, I lean precariously towards the next wont barrow.

As my fingers sift the soft earth, I hold my breath as one, then another, now a third and fourth tiny fragment of fractured terracotta reveals itself. Diminutive and alluring, these wont-gifted fragments resonate with potential. Theirs is an eloquent tale of devotion and destruction. There was no hypocaust here in this desolate place. This priest, this bard, this sage … call him what we will … he would shiver in his devotion, worried only by the keening wind, untroubled by under-floor comfort. More likely these tiny fragments once formed part of the tiled roof that sheltered him from the rain and protected the deity from the sun’s searching eye. What fate brought them crashing down, and crushed them to obscurity? Was it fire or the hammer? Or maybe the irresistible attrition of time, the inevitable passing of the seasons, and mankind’s transient care?

With a sinner’s shame, but an accompanying frisson, I place the terracotta remnants in my pocket, and stoop towards the final wonthill. I hardly dare for anything, and yet my fingers search expectantly, yearning for that tantalizing touch. I see it before I feel it. A slim shard of coarse black pottery, as wide as my thumb, and half its length. It displays a barely perceptible curve to its form, its inner side plain, its outer revealing shallow marks of an incised pattern, a grid perhaps. Words flit, definitions fly. Is it Roman? Is it British? Was it a beaker? Was it a pot? Not least, is it the wont’s, or is it mine?

We walk on, and I whisper a silent goodbye to this sacred place.

The seductive folds of Maiden Castle guide us back to both our starting point and our exhilarating conclusion. As I turn finally to survey the vastness of its inner enclosure, I can do nothing but wonder. Wonder at the overwhelming ambition of its creators. Wonder at the harshness of their existence. Wonder at their faith and commitment, not least their undoubted tenacity. But wonder also at our scant understanding, our diminished responsibility, our shameful disconnectedness with both the wider world and our own hallowed patch.

That evening I wash black earth from red terracotta and wonder still at what latent potential lies in such diminutive scraps. I cup them in my palm and close my eyes.

We return home four days later, and its then I claim them for my own. On an old Georgian chest in the bedroom I keep a miniature cabinet. A wunderkammer, a display cabinet, a cabinet of curiosities, call it what you will. Of black lacquered wood and early Italian pedigree, it conceals behind its locked doors seven internal drawers. But to the initiated it reveals an eighth, a secret drawer hidden within its depths. As I release the Maiden drawer from its hiding place and peer into its tiny, red-lined frame, it reveals its treasures to me now … four terracotta fragments and one black shard.


© Steve Hobbs 2020

Across the Old Stile to Winter

Herefordshire, deepest Herefordshire, comes at you from the past. Not dawdling back from censorious Victorian autumns, nor leaping headlong from hedonistic Georgian springs. Herefordshire lies recumbent under her primal mantle. Sculpted by time’s passing she bears, gracefully, the marks of early man’s hand, like inked ciphers upon the virgin parchment, or chiselled scars upon Kilpeck’s stone.

Stand in her lanes and see. Raise your eyes to the raven’s nest, follow silvered streams through misted valleys, lift your gaze to wooded folds and cloud-scoured hills. Feel truly English before England’s nascent aspiration reared its head. Feel Celtic passion inscribe its foliate imaginings upon your contemporary self. Feel truly old.

Now come, take a hand, pass quietly down the lane to where the Monnow Valley lies.

*  *  *  *  *

I came in search of Piper, Sutherland and Braxton, of Minton and of Nash. I came in 2015 following the flickering beacon of British Neo-Romantic art; Nicolas and Frances McDowall lighting the way. I knew of their work through the Old Stile Press. I knew of the Old Stile Press through the variant routes of Rigby Graham and Clive Hicks-Jenkins. Both artists and makers of books; both illustrators and illuminators of singular vision; both torch-bearers (wittingly or not) for that peculiarly British genius loci – that spirit of place.

MonnowWeaned on Samuel Palmer and William Blake I am, have ever been, lost in the hinterlands of British Neo-Romantic art. I roam these lands a willing acolyte, gleaning from the landscape what pickings I can find, for book-shelf or for wall. This passion survived the frisson of the fin-de-siècle, a full forty years in passing, lying latent for its inevitable re-awakening. Beardsley graciously gave-way to Piper, with an eloquent nod of appreciation (I love him for it still).

The McDowalls built their collection in tandem with their press. Those drawings, paintings and prints hung that day as an emotional testament to a particular passion. And I became ensnared, caught-up in a singular vision of what it is, or was, to sublimate that spirit of place onto paper or canvas; a wonderful alchemy of perception and craft.

Nourished by the offering of paintings and drawings I turned to the collection of prints and monotypes to refresh my palette. Richer fare awaited. Copper plate and box-wood block; lino-block or lithographer’s stone; each medium captivated and challenged. Challenged the eye to believe that graver or crayon could fashion such conceit, could capture such vital spirit and leave it animated in the amber of the printer’s stamp.

Blake and Palmer met me there, and charted my steps through the landscape. A landscape of vision and dream, of sense and perception. A landscape of imaginings, filtered through the lenses of Nash, Tanner, Hermes and Trevelyan. Bryan Ingham was there, and Rigby Graham too.

And so they led me to the close …

A Poignant Memory (for Ellis), 1999, wood engraving by Garrick Palmer.

I knew this Palmer, my Palmer’s namesake, through his work for the Old Stile Press, and particularly through the stunning book LAND, illuminated with his incomparable wood engravings. These are engravings of ethereal power, enlivened by a weaving together of the anarchic vigour of natural growth and the geometric imperative that would bind it.

A Poignant Memory captivated me. It sent me back to LAND. It saddened me. It set me on a quest. It snagged me, and would not let me go.

Winter GardenThree years passed, and by benign chance I found what I was searching for. Winter Garden was its title. A large watercolour in subtle ground-hues, capturing the leaden beauty of that winter place. A daring, unconventional, spirited, and perversely geometric vision of a dormant winter plot. The trees pregnant with latent vitality; the solstice sky heavy and brooding.

I wrote to Garrick last year, and he graciously answered. The painting and its creation was fondly remembered, as being representative of a “very productive period”. It was the winter of 1960. The location was close to his parental home in Fareham, Hampshire; a small garden that overlooked the landscape towards Wickham. He remembered visiting on a number of occasions to make drawings. Most notably, he remembered all with great affection.

Enlightenment can sometimes reach out to us from the fog of ignorance, and in so doing serendipity serves us well.

And well served I feel by that memorable Monnow morning, as I wander alone through the Winter Garden.

Remembering Jack

A couple of years ago we made our first trip to Ty Isaf. As we drove through the sublime Cambrian Mountains (Dr. Syntax would understand), with red kites wheeling overhead, the anticipation was palpable. We had recently bought our first painting of Clive’s, and we were on our way to collect it. “Hold”, “Hervé and the Wolf”, two titles, twice the allure.

Herve and the Wolf

Inevitably sat-nav let us down in the last mile, and we foundered on the brink, knocking doors, searching vainly for the white house on the hill. At last we found the turn, drove down the narrow track, and met a car coming towards us. As our paths crossed we caught our first glimpse of Peter. He welcomed us like long-lost friends, though we’d never met. “Off to collect the vegetables … see you soon.” And away he went.

As we drove through the gate and approached the house our gaze was met with a perceptive but welcoming stare. There, on the window seat in the bay he sat. It was Jack, silent sentinel, bright of eye, salon savvy guardian of this place. Clive opened the door, but it was Jack who greeted us first; generously, enthusiastically, unreservedly.

When Peter returned, laden with fresh greens, we pulled on our boots and headed for the woods. First Clive and Maggie, then Peter and I, and then Jack, the mercurial shifter, leading, following, darting, catching, always delighting.

That evening the conversation ran freely, the fire burned brightly, our welcome to this most welcoming of homes was complete. My companion for much of the time was Jack. Snuggled close to me on the sofa, his warmth on my leg, I played subconsciously with the velvet nap of his ear. Kindest soul.

The following morning he joined us at breakfast, taking his place assuredly behind one, then another of us, on our chairs.

As a parting gift that day Maggie gave Clive and Peter a diminutive felted figure of Jack she had made. Having met him now it seemed to have caught his glorious joie de vivre.

Felt Jack

A year or so later we returned to Ty Isaf; another trip, another painting. On our first visit we had been seduced by a stunning painting in Clive and Peter’s own collection. There it hung on the first-floor landing, “The Rapture” a glorious interpretation of the story of Tobias and the Angel. It was beyond the scale of anything we had bought before, but oh what a picture. I am eternally grateful for Clive’s generosity in letting us take it home; I know how much it meant to him.

The Rapture 2

But we had devious deeds to do that day too. Unbeknown to Maggie I had bought her another painting, which was to be her Christmas present. But how to smuggle it into the van without her knowing? Jack was to be the lynchpin in this masquerade. Whilst he and Clive masterfully diverted Maggie’s attention, Peter and I slipped out of the rear door and squirreled-away the offending picture in the van. The subterfuge worked like a dream.

So why do I write this, so long after the event?

Dear Jack left us yesterday. Left Clive and Peter with an unfathomable loss, yet hearts brim-full of love and joy.

When guests come to stay with us they wake each morning to The Rapture. It fills the wall with its sensuous colour, its vivid symbolism, its gloriously skewed landscapes, and at its heart the most tender of portraits … dear Jack.

Jack close up

I look upon this little soul every day, and as I recall that soft velvet nap between finger and thumb, I cannot help but smile.

A Cathedral Miscellany

Library

Image courtesy of Dean and Chapter Worcester Cathedral

During the closed season at Compton Verney I revert back to volunteering at the Cathedral Library in Worcester (UK). Once a week I return to the magnificent “new” library (new because the books were moved from their former repository to their present room some time in the mid fourteenth century!). And here I indulge myself wholeheartedly, but with a purpose, believe me!

As volunteers in this magnificent place we are encouraged to research into the peculiarities, vagaries, and wonders of the collection. The cathedral library houses the second largest collection of medieval manuscripts in any UK cathedral (second only to Durham). Here, among the Saxon, Norman, medieval, and early-modern manuscripts, and the incunabula and early printed books, we roam free, searching for tales untold, reviving long lost memories. Our aim is to unlock some of the secrets of the place, and share them as best we can on the Cathedral Library’s blog site.

The cathedral librarian’s trust and generosity is such that some of us are free to follow our chosen lines of research, or merely let serendipity lead us by the hand. And in so doing the most revealing and intoxicating gems come to life.

Since December 2016 I’ve written three blogs for the library, ranging from the mysteries of fifteenth century printing, to the curious spectacles of the audit feasts at the cathedral. Here are links to my pieces (below), and there will be others over the next few weeks.

A Tale of Types: William Caxton in Worcester Cathedral Library

Worcester to York: A Road Much Travelled

Feasting and Finance: The Curious History of Audit Feasts at Worcester Cathedral

Please find the time to browse the other blogs too, and you too can wander through the marvellous world of Worcester Cathedral Library.

My thanks go to Dr. David Morrison, Librarian of Worcester Cathedral Library, for his generosity and support.

Sospiri

(c) Richard Woodward (nephew); Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation

Leaf-lamp black, wooded heights
Corvid cry that plants the seed
Latent ardour, simmering need
Ruffles the accepted creed

Step out lightly, charting ways
Through possibility’s wild dance
Punctuate passage with fervent glance
Faltering steps towards blind chance

Shaded corner, solitary seat
Twisted wire, ring of blue
Yearning’s symbols, varied hue
Designed to hold, preserve the view

Turn one leaf, text on text
Fan through passions, displace air
Perfect draught, my love is there
Sighs, breaths, brief despair

Celeste

von-stuck

Celeste
Craven girl
Gossamer fine
Fearful eyed
Shaded voice
Reed flute timbre
Sour lip bruise
Claw feet rip
Yearning cut

Celeste
Bloody mine
Gut scrape
Embalming kiss
Beauty scourge
Loving flinch
Ashen soul
Wounding touch
Bestial crawl

Celeste
Chastened child
Finger slight
Breathing touch
Guileful scent
Slick limbed
Dew dripped
Tight inside
Measured kill

One Autumn Day

botanic-gardens-oxford

 

 

 

 

 

To live again that longed-for day
That came and passed too soon
Damn time that draws out hope yet steals the moment
That drags deep yearning in its wake
And parts me from my sleep

To wander past mellifluous stone, and stroll the garden’s gravel
And dance around what cannot be
Share scents and quiet confessions
Tell tales of fathers, sisters, lovers
That tested, tempted, and delighted
To share the sun, and pain and hurt, and lighten loads so few can see
This autumn day that is, and yet can never be
And close our eyes and wish the hand could hold the one that craves it

To talk of Shelley’s Plant, and Music Rooms, and Hawks, and Black Eyed Dogs
Scale stairs, scan shelves, seek books to share
Brush arms and feel the frisson there
A gift … read this one dearest

And still you doubt your beauty
And so I stand you there,
And tell you so, your back against the museum wall
And if, and if … know this my sweet
Had fate but dealt another hand
That I’d be kneeling at your feet

And so I touch your seat, look back, then drive
Missing, hurting, longing, loving
And now another autumn day
Yet that day lives in me

Save Our Libraries

Library 2To borrow John Lennon’s timeless lyric “I read the news today, oh boy”. Although if the truth be known, I “saw” the news, and the news was bad. There the familiar story went, of financial constraints, the seeming necessity to adapt to changing demands, the dubious (I’m being kind here) rationale that I should accept the fact that the old ways are changing, the old ways are redundant, the old ways are so much romanticism, so much cant. And the source of all this questionable wisdom? An economist; a young economist; a young economist brim-full of the simplistic, sterile, humanity crushing logic of the radicalised acolyte. And the object of her spleen? Our libraries.

So let me lay my cards on the table, I admit it, I have a vested interest here. And why? Because I took my degree in librarianship, and spent the first seven years of my career in academic libraries. You might say I’m a professional then, or was. But that’s not the real reason. Hell no! The real reason I have a vested interest is that I’m a citizen of this country; a citizen with rights and aspirations, brim full with tradition and experience. I once had what I want others to have too. I once enjoyed a privilege, nay – a right, to a public service, a longstanding provision, which helped shape the man I am today. And it galls me beyond reason that that universal right should be taken away from us all, as a matter of economic (and political) expediency.

So who do I think I am to care so much? I’ll tell you who … a boy brought up in a humble but fiercely proud working class family that nonetheless held dear to the principles of lifetime-learning and personal enrichment. We read, we questioned, we learnt, and we staunchly applied that learning to our lives, and brought it to bear on our interactions with others. Books were always in our home; some we bought, and some we borrowed. And those we borrowed came from the local public library.

Did you get that? “Public” library. You know the thing – libraries for the people; libraries as a democratic right; libraries that democratised too the provision of learning and entertainment materials. Libraries for all people, of all ages, from all backgrounds, that were local to your community, and free at the point of provision. Proud and valuable places run by proud and valuable people.

But what of them now, in our modern (what a chill that word sends down your spine) world? Are they to go the way of the costermonger, the chimney sweep, the bobby on the beat, not least the government of the people for the people? It would seem so.

But why all the fuss? What have libraries ever done for us? We’ve got the internet at our fingertips, what more could we want? I’ll tell you what. We want a place that is truly open and accessible to all, that is free at the point of enrichment, and that requires no investment in expensive technology to access it (and yes Ms. Economist, that investment is all too real and all too prohibitive for many poor people – remember them?). We want to embrace the opportunity to delight and benefit from the marvellous serendipity of browsing the shelves, discovering new authors, new ideas, new opportunities; stumbling across that inspiring reference work when you thought you wanted a novel. Delighting in the marvellously skewed world of “Winnie the Pooh” or “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”, when you know Dad has been made redundant, and Mum is on a zero-hours contract, and they can’t afford to buy you a copy of your own, bless them. And bless the philanthropists too, men like Carnegie who made their money, and cherished the opportunity to give something back (a sadly rare impulse amongst our contemporary financial and political elite).

And while we’re here, let’s spare a quick thought for the children of the poor. Go on, just try for a moment Ms. Economist. Spare a thought for how hard it was to kindle (no pun intended) their desire to read, to learn, to discover. Then think on how easy it is for you to extinguish that opportunity, to impoverish them, to watch that light gutter and die.

So I say, without reservation or fear of censure, damn the tunnel-visioned, long-term economic view, when it comes at the cost of our cultural identity, heart and soul. A metaphoric pox on the impoverished, academy-driven sweat-shop mentality, where the politically-cloned mathematicians, scientists, and financiers sneer down from their self-constructed pedestals, held aloft by self-interest and cultural myopia, at the arts for their “negligible” value.

How is it that our impoverished little Britain, once the proud exporter of taste, culture, design and vision, prefers now to export the very source of those things, rather than export their outcomes? How is it that we come to build a future upon the unstable foundations of finance, and let the fruits of our genius as a nation wither? The British car industry is gone forever. Our manufacturing industry is gone forever. Our healthcare, free at the point of delivery is in terminal decline. Rural public transport too, is gone forever. And libraries…remember them?

Since retirement I now waste my days (indeed – no financier I) in the worthless pursuit of cultural satisfaction. I work in an art gallery, and I write. As a self-published author I reluctantly embraced the allure of the electronic book. To many like me, the ubiquitous Kindle is a boon. But I tell you this, I would sacrifice it in a heartbeat for a volume or two on the library shelves.

So for pity’s sake … our public libraries …  let’s shout their praise, not sing their requiem

#saveourlibraries

Worcester Priory’s Visitations

Wolsey Injunctions

Wolsey’s Injunctions. Image copyright the Dean and Chapter of Worcester Cathedral (UK)

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been at the cathedral library in Worcester, researching the pre-Reformation visitations to the priory of Worcester, in preparation for my latest blog.

Having been married to a teacher for 30-odd years, the raw anticipation of an impending OFSTED visit was usually an emotionally draining event. So spare a thought for Prior More who saw three major visitations during the latter part of his priority. The findings, and subsequent injunctions issued, may seem harsh; however, it must be said, given the contemporary evidence (and allowing even for the occasional personal axe to grind), he really should have seen it coming!

To read my full blog about Cardinal Wolsey’s, Archibishop Cranmer’s, and Bishop Latimer’s withering reports, just click the link here: Worcester Visitations

Fold

friedrich_cloister_cemetery_1817_1819

Fold the year back, blind upon itself
Layer darkness over shade
Shun time’s fluctuations, and cast light’s
Insinuations to the inky fissure’s depths

Damn glimmer and glisten, snuff-out glow
Draw close enfolding, perpetual night
And drive out sullied day
To die extinguished in the silvered eye

Cast clouded gaze on wasted lands,
Sketch pewter shades of fractured walls,
And dirty mustard straw,
On each fading day’s sullied page

Bend the tree’s back to blight and blast
Clothe branch and bark in death’s pale hue
Twist fibres taught and sinews shred
Glimpse bud-free fingers stab the bloodied sky

Hear cloven, bristled or rough shod foot
Tread fractured, slivered glass strewn low
And skid scant progress
On, ever on, towards Spring’s beguiling dawn

*  *  *  *  *

And yet, and yet
Pray, let me stay
Drag me no further
It suits me here