Forgotten Ground Regained
The Whitby Elegy
Winner of the 1994 Cædmon Prize
Originally published in Withowinde 101, p. 5, Winter, 1994.
Here at the cliff’s edge, clear skies above methe gannet’s gathering-place, gorse-hidden I would wait.No man might wander ‧ where I had chosenunless he by some falseness ‧ had found out that shelter.The lark’s skein-song ‧ spooled down the air-roads,solitary wind-hover, Heaven’s high cantor.Once, young and year-fresh, when I yearned by the shore,Saltspray soothed me, summer’s dew-fire;but now this memory-store ‧ makes moist the eyelash.Winter, that grey wolf, grants no man comfort.I saw the sea-eagle ‧ stoop to the fish hoard,where, like one wind-gusted ‧ or guided towards me,tiny at the wave’s rim ‧ you ran along the shingle.This our talking-place survives, sunlit as before,hidden from the horse-track, a haven among furze-bloom.The eagle wheels on, watchful on his sky-riding.The fierce sun beats ‧ on beached hulls by fish coops.Old, I still catch larksong ‧ loveliest tune-river,flowing to the seal-ways ‧ yet flying above me.Quiet your voice then, its vows clung to me.Quiet too is grief: its grip will not slacken.
Copyright © Ian Greenwood, 1994. Reprinted with the permission of his family.