Land of Three Rivers by Neil Astley

Author:Neil Astley
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781780373775
Publisher: Bloodaxe Books

Cushy Number

Much desired landscape loved keenly several lifetimes

Our unregenerated soil-heap hillsides, bleak

and bare of plastic life: one everyday religion.

Your ghost spindrifts in the lead-crusted law,

in mist combed by bracken and fern. The old school

where you were humiliated and betrayed, thrown

back to the riverbank and cribs of marigold, head

shaved, now up for sale: bijou conversion possibilities

for the turbo-mob, weird souls dreaming of car-reg

numbers and mobile phone codes. They are taking

over from the Barbour vegetarians, who couldn’t

stand the nailed-down winters. Inside you, spectre,

an inarticulate fury. Me, tongue-boy, lathered with words,

and you, thee, fern-haired and Pearl naked. We swam

against all Tyne tides which rose from the sea. When you sink

towards the head of the hush, where the beck runs

out of the tunnel towards the west, brewing foam

as it goes, we’ll meet my adverbs ad infinitum:

tongue-stoned invisible prelate of the shaking holes.

BARRY MACSWEENEY

Pearl in the Silver Morning, 1999 | Wolf Tongue, 2000

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