On Geoffrey's Hill

Am I channelling Chaucer or kicking at the flotsam

and jetsam along the hard shoulder? Forget

those scribbled lines on bus tickets and travel vouchers.

Into the bin.

The moon’s umbra lost to fog

Smothered whispers and the trampling of hay

A curse. My laptop fails to charge.

An upturned pail.

Yo. Yo ho. Yo ho ho.

My sweetheart came clad

in the naked root of ginger. Barley shadows

shifting, unkind pearls strung around

her salty neck.

The Muses, lost in mundane operations,

Fetching the washing, sweeping the floor…

Their scalpels slice the beetroot so…

Exactly so.

And now? The thoroughbred that rushed

the windy fields like clouds, is slowed.

But, oh, what folly. The clasp is rusted.

The diamond lost.