Alchemisland

Our bleating goat we ate

Japelessly on day sixty three

This scant bay where no dove plays

Where no plugless flow cascades

Only leafless Burren

A stone-fisted wasteland

I hate this place.

While with mind and rind enjuiced I shape

In vile paces, with a lost man’s patience,

A latent grave to suit my changed frame,

In the dappled ground of the only wood, like a pagan.

I hate this taking bay, this strangling land of weed and wind

Where all our hope was heaped like gold kept warm by dragonheat.

Sleek oars negotiated feebly with an o’er erudite sea

Every answer already in Her keeping, and us so good at nakedly leaping.