Issue 18: David Wheatley

The Fourth Craw

                         i.m. Roy Fisher

I am driving the Jacobite army north from Derby.


Three craws sat upon a wa  


You can go there if

you want, into that past,  

all banners and ballads,   


and lie in its grievance

shaped to a vacancy.

I remember the trampling


of the flag, and a horse,

legs gone, catching

its tail as it fell. 


The first craw was greetin fer his maw


Assigning legs and arms

to this or that body

among the tangle


balletic tableau


I watched the sun-

light cross the valley


implacable but gilding

our profiles fondly


as we took flight.


The second craw fell and broke his jaw


Living that high up

said the woman in the courtyard


holding my reins and  

gesturing over the hills


anywhere else must

feel like a come-down


so many worlds 

of patient neglect


stored up for our

return and whose


forgiveness

won’t come cheap.


The third craw couldna flee awa


Following by night

the ginnels and shambles of Leeds


as though a blind man should trace

with his fingers the features


of a child’s face

we came to the North


good enough to have

stayed where we left it


And the fourth craw wasna there at aa


the ways closed over

behind us and all manner


of joyous lament finding

its proper dark at last.

David Wheatley’s The President of Planet Earth will be published in autumn 2017 by Carcanet.