Blackberry Picking (7)
“Late August”, “glossy, purple clot”, “red, green, hard as a knot”, “stains on the tongue and a lust for picking”, “where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots”, our hands were peppered // with thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard’s.”, “a rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache”, the sweet flesh would turn sour”
Death of a naturalist (8)
Lexical field - “rotted”, “festered”, “heavy”, ““bubbles gargled delicately”, “best of all was the warm, thick slobber // Of frogspawn, that grew like clotted water”, “every spring”, “jampotfuls of the jellied // Specks”, “Miss Wall // Told us how the Daddy frog was called a bullfrog and how he croaked and the mammy frog // Laid hundreds of little eggs and this was Frogspawn”, “yellow in the sun and brown // In rain.”, “I ducked through hedges // To a course croaking.”, “their loose necks pulsed like sails”
The Harvest Bow (8)
“As you plaited the harvest bow, // You implicated the mellowed silence in you”, “Into a knowable corona, // A throwaway love-knot of straw”, “until your fingers moved somnambulant”, “I tell and finger it like braille” “old beds and ploughs in hedges // An auction notice on an outhouse wall - // You with a harvest bow in your lapel”, “whacking the tips off weeds and bushes // Beats out of time, and beats but flushes // Nothing.”, “The end of art is peace”, “Like a drawn snare // Slipped lately by the spirit of the corn // Yet burnished by its passage, and still warm.”
Follower (8)
“His shoulders globed like a full sail strung”, “An expert.”, “The sod rolled without breaking.”, “I stumbled in his hobnailed wake,”, “I wanted to grow up and plough,”, “All I ever did was follow, // In his broad shadow round the farm”, “I was a nuisance, tripping, falling // Yapping always.”, “But today // It is my father who keeps stumbling // Behind me, and will not go away”
Digging (10)
“The squad pen rests, snug as a gun.”, “Under my window”, “Bends low, comes up twenty years away”, “Loving their cool hardness in our hands”, “By God, the old man could handle a spade. // Just like his old man”, “going down and down // For the good turf. Digging”, “The cold smell of potato mould”, “cuts of and edge // Through living roots”, “But I’ve no spade to follow men like them”, “I’ll dig with it.”
The Tollund Man (8)
“some day I will go to Aarhus” “To see his peat-brown head, // The mild pods of his eye-lids,”, “I will stand a long time. // Bridegroom to the goddess,”, “a saint’s kept body”, “Something of his sad freedom // as he rode the tumbril // Should come to me, driving”, “Watching the pointed hands // Of country people, // Not knowing their tongue.”, “Out here in Jutland, // In the old man-killing parishes”, “I will feel lost, // Unhappy, and at home.”
