Nab Hill, Oxenhope

Though the signs of man were fading, and still fading fast,

The hill still wore them without grudge or stir.

With no men to prune,

The hill was left to roam and grow around itself.

That’s why he was there-

To take part in its blessed disorder.

And to bathe, childlike, in the blasting wind.

He thanked God that All is free.

Free from the preening hands

Of the preening minds

Of the never-happy men.

Like the purest of imbeciles,

He fell through the heather-malice

That tied knots around his feet.

He reached black overflows,

Still madly propagating water -

All born of a week’s hard rain.

He jumped from clod to clod,

As bog-mud sucked him down

And farted under striding steps.

The sopping grass weltered too -

Washed clean by crystal springs

Breaking their leashes,

Overrunning their banks,

Rioting on footpaths.

At the mad-happy heart -

An oasis of five trees.

All bent by wind-weight

And the true attrition

Of a thousand winters.

That wind played his eardrums

Enough to make them bleed.

Liberty Caps had taken the paths,

As the wax caps

(Their scarlet sharp against the mushroom-brown)

Stood by and watched.

Mottlegills stood proud –

As proud as they could be

While sunk in ignoble sheep shit.

He sat on the hill’s fleece of rusty bracken.

Swallowed the All around him.

Then looked at the horizon.

The hill, too, looked at the horizon.

Both knew what they knew.

And what they knew

Was real and it was true.

*) Nab Hill is believed to be one of the inspirations for Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights.