Hill of the Bees

Geoffrey Grigson

Under terracettes and bushes of steep slopes
are these: tracks, hollows, holes, maples, yews, most
muscular ash boles. Over streams are:
dips, slades, slacks,
ditches, mint nooks, hunt gates, springs, night.
Into these by old habit
and tenure we do project ourselves or portions
of us or what in degrees of our likeness we inherit.

At least we did; breathe then
they did back again: the whole companionage,
night, springs, hunt gates, mint nooks, slacks, slades,
ditches, dips, streams;
those muscular ash boles, yews, maples, holes, hollows,
tracks, bushes, terracettes, high slopes:
the lot-all that companionage.

That substantial instability, let it
wither and dry, let it-when, say,
night away from a too
great staring of night-killing light at least
in our words "seems breathing" -die,
or be unfelt, we die.
Unpicking the nest of most warm
feathers we have so long, soft if deluding,
from our own breasts, our own undercoverts torn.