Look at the place –

quadrooplegic

farms, rented goons

crow from sallow palettes –

almost the anointed bl-

ush of mouth, his 4x4 blackness

verged verged on the pristinely unkempt

– verges

on depravity –

flora fiends knifing toward

his wheels, which his engine

never pretends

to discourage

Everyday, 4 oklok

whether in bluebell or severe

nerves

blank

to the councillor's traipse round

his invested acres

say g'day to you sirs an your dirty records, say

farewell friends, the hill'll stand

for the records, where old man

Walton

lurched toward the scythe

everyday, the glut of neck, the crow-lipped feast

of inbred silence – say,

who did it?

– Neveroomind boy,

Fabian and the Spoon couldn't get it, nor could we.

Old Walton and the fauna he consulted on the weather and the day

augurs Walton's whistling lurch toward'is bird-song legend.

– Say, old Potter probly done it

(and Potter had the book to do it

flinging his rage like the devil on the hill)

Old Potter

down the pub, downing

bitter, laughing

wi the best ov us.

Old witch-Walton

he chattered as a boy, until

his sister died

And seven black hounds

On Meon

As he walked

Vanguard of his sister

all in white –

Ghosted the very speech from him

almost mute

Seven black hounds: death to you Walton

and your whistling kind

FABIAN OF THE YARD

Came to town

to help the Spoon

– who was, they say,

perplexed –

saw the rise, marked the scene,

carved himself in stone

But what did he see

On the slow rise of the crow-perched hill

On the crook lanes of the crow-perched hill?

A black hound on the

A black hound on the

A black Hound

on the Hill, that night

downing bitter with the best of us, until

at the pucker of his annunciation

the crowface floored him

with a tacit caw.

But really, from the sight of him

he saw, as with my own eyes, saw.

he had you, who e'er done it

had you and the Spoon for

a pair of packed-off fools.

Still, the Spoon, old Spooner

– your willow wails for thee –

came back, year after pedant year

in his dotage

Lord Arawyn sloping past his shoulder

and the hounds

come whistling for eluding

clues-old Walton in his grave, Potter

down the pub, the whole world

in its cups.

On the day of Valentine's sacred passion,

Walton made his way

past the old green at Quinton

St. Swithin's and the lanes

up to the hedge-rows

of the crow-perched hill

On the day of Valentine's sacred passion

- though it doesn't bare comparison, augurs

more bloody than a battle in the skies – on the day

- though I've no compass on the heavens – on that day

nerves on edge, consulting on the tweeting eve

Walton made his way

up past the hedgerows

and Spooner's willow on the clay

of the crow-perched hill

And saw,

on the crook-lanes

of the crow-perched hill –

the old king on the

the soul hunt on the

whoever done it

and the scythe

and his old arms

ribbons

and the sky

the broad caw of the sky

and yon sister

waiting with

a howling livery –

the natural barber scythed and pitchforked for the coming

trim

– Careful lad or it'll put a oodoo on you

Liar liar

old Spoony and the Yard

called Potter through their teeth.

he an Walton had a row, see, over

pay, not much, enough prhaps, since them hedges

never cut themselves, witch-Walton whistling through'is

teeth, perfect day to get'im, cos the day an place is

pagan as it comes

said Walton was loon

by modern standards,

wyrd by crow-lipped

And you were gone Walton

sixty years before

you were gone, or so they say,

scared to your grave

and risen, say, to cut our hedges

and live with thy neice

old Walton, fearsomely –

bird-whistling, bluebell-footed Walton

and the day

he whistled through his

throat

Say, was there a bull untethered week last?

I say there was a dog there

a big, black dog there

a black dog on the

a black hound on the

a blag ound on the hill.

The black cat which prowls nightly on my path

to cross me, is a figment's cenotaph o; the black

hounds of Arawyn are

obelisks of a witching night

and the farmer, say

an object of reflection, and the planners say

procrastination.

It was the enclosure see

and them ministers hoo couldn't give a damn

let the land be sold to naturalists

turn it into forest for a fee

from the meadows

Claire and clover

from the hedgerows

and the birds

and not that it matters, not

that it matters much at all

but I wonder, in an idle hour I wonder

if old Potter saw, I wonder if,

whoever done it

scried, scried our circumstance—

predicted.

In their 4x4's the maddened crowd

sit blank vapours of men

scrounging

a thought

from the

scrub

— Careful lad or it'll put a oodoo on you

Have you ever seen the sunset of the small

rise? The devil's mound, dislocated wood, inscryable

veins, crawling farms, the shadow

it casts? As though

one place out of all the others was picked

as compass for sacrifice

Liar.

But who under a full moon would cross

as I have, hoo under a full moon, say

where the devil cocked his arm to crush the faith

on a certain confluence of superstitions

on the protuberance, any free day

or the topography of sainted hoodoo, say who

– O Wordsworth! o turd-footed Oedipus –

would

follow Walton's meander

past the old steep fort

and Arawyn's haunts

Past Spooner's Willow on the clay

past where the arms were gouged

deep, red, the throat was slit

and pitchforked to drinking earth

and the cross, Walton,

tithe of ages, the cross

etched like the devil's stone

into that old and barren carcass

whether through brawl

whether through same

impulse of that half-wit who

a century back

forked the she-witch in a Quinton barn

stacking, stakung, as we used to

when ministerial gods

ran dry

One century ago, then half,

is it time to do the

the urge to do the

the urge to make the journey

up to the hazy patchwork, eyes

straining out to pristine

bellies, whether in bluebell or the sever nerves,

or the interspersed yellowtide, brick-beaded,

where warren-hided pores suck

at the climbing fibres

how, in the best of days,

the bluebells,

even then, the protuberance dissects the

world into a quartered locus, and the

ley, which runs a course

through it to Trinity

how in the best of bluebell trudges

even then,

the talk, the hairies, and the wiccas

at solstice in their camper vans

romancing the place

an how Walton-and Potter's dogs,

hanged the next week, howling

each anniversary

or was it ours?

And how Walton and Arawyn's dogs

with ancient disturbances, city of ecce-

ntric field and mind,

as the wind picks up, even though the

whole is less than other hills close

by, even so, the place—

Death to you Walton and your whistling kind

and the blank eyes of 4 oklok manics by the verges

and the possible trick of it all, and the method,

and the rumours, even the crow-lipped feast of silence

even so—

Death to you Walton and your whistling kind