Poetry

Two Pastorals

Totley Moss

November high upon the heather moors

throwing bricks into the railway shaft

as muffled sounds of trains passing below

met thunder that arose after the smash.

We sat astride the kiln-fired wall and looked

into that endless hole and listened to the

sucking and the rushing of the air refract

as noise was crushed and split in answer.

Your silhouette against the mist - one leg

above the peaty heath the other hung

above the deep – ‘hullo’ you called - my head

rang out as the echoed sounds sang.

An year from then we returned to find

a knotted rope dropping out of sight.

A Cornish Harbour at Night

My breath left me when the officers sprung

from the shadows waving torches and they

took you down - as they stood me up my lungs

hacked back to life, heaving hard through a maze

of hands that searched me in and out. They led

you off, cuffed, out of sight, took my details

and then were gone. I waited for my head

to stop keening, alone under that single

street lamp. The yachts rocked in the wind

that bore a hot bleached sting of the sea to

the eyes, a single staircase of cracked concrete

leading down from my shoes and after you.

Too cold to sleep I staggered back to ours

to find the clothes you’d saved strewn all around.

Mark Doyle