Corncrake

Around the random horseshoe wall

I helped a mason to repair,

pennies, fish-hooks, pins corrode.

A thousand years this carved stone stood

beside the well, giving it power

to comfort or to heal.

LITTLE HUNGER

I drove to Little Hunger promontory

looking for pink stone

in roofless houses huddled by the sea

to buy to build my own.

Hovels to live in, ruins to admire

from a car cruising by,

the weathered face caught in a sunset fire,

hollowed with exility;

whose gradual fall my purchase would complete,

clearing them off the land,

the seven cabins needed to create

the granite house I planned.

Once mine, I'd work on their dismemberment,

threshold, lintel, wall;

and pick a hearthstone from a rubble fragment

to make it integral.

CORNCRAKE

Petty boss of a ditch,

why so much energy and such a boring song?

Surely your mate must be tired of hearing

how little you have to say,

and how often you repeat yourself

through the small hours of the night,

while she is silently sitting on her nest

and producing your offspring.

O yes, you're a hero to distract the attention

of everyone away from her significant

silent creation

by compelling us to listen to your cant:

though you really can't help it,

you'd prefer to sing like the lark,

but the only flying you can manage

is involuntary migration,

trailing your fleshy feet behind you,

just clearing meadow and cornland,

dipping with relief into the nearest drain,

instead of upwards into the sun,

and never where you're likely to be seen.

GALLOWS RIDDLE

HANGMAN

In I went, out again,

Death I saw, Life within.

Three confiners, one let free.

Riddle me that, or hung you'll be.

TINKER

Five maggoty sheep I stole

Tangled me on the gallows tree,

Now my tongue must riddle me free.

"A nest of birds in an old man's skull."