THE HUNTERIAN POEMS
The Harvest Wake
(Sept 2014)
Damp and dusk huddle
round dying flames
old summer smothered
in a smoke of slow heat
leaves, blackthorn branches
smoulder by empty fields
muffled voices splutter
curse the year’s turning.
From tongues lost to song
silence demands its time
shrunk indistinct figures
truckled to mud
stare at the embers
distance in expressions lit.
Journey in the hung head
of a hobbling cob
in the white of its long face
the road ahead.
Gypsy fires are burning
For daylights past and gone.
Jim Carruth
Sir James Guthrie, The Gipsy Fires are Burning for Daylight's Past and Gone, 1881.
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