Folklore warns of the
Marshes
Of the bog
Beware the wetlands
The black water and the mist
The suffocating fog
The mud that clings like oil
And so in twisted history
With the misplaced confidence
Of self anointed gods
They dredged it and
Buried it
Farmed it and reclaimed it
Some great theft from the dark spirits
And assorted ghouls of the
Cursed soaked soil
But you cannot bury a curse
And the frigid sludge
Oozes up through the pub carparks
And the A-roads
Fog still crawls across the landscape
And smothers it
Muffles it
Makes a closed room of the outside
The dead acoustic of a world
Shrunk
To a yard of frozen earth
It haunts the empty garden centres
And isolates the motorhomes
Polyester flags
Sag silently
Blind in the thick white breath of
Jilted ghosts
Candle light wobbles on the walls
Of a single occupancy room
As the TV chants stories of an ambiguous
Ever advancing threat
And men begin to sink
Folklore warns of the marshes
Men are still lost to the land
Out beyond the cities
And the train stations
Beyond the passing of time
And the limp of progress
Ghosts are made of the living
In flat-roof social clubs
Portacabin scout huts
And potholed lanes
Through flat acres of
Hedgerow
And frosted glass skies
There is no exit from this place
No landmarks to aim at
Nor vantage points
Or higher ground
The land of the lost
Of the hopeless, wandering
Above petrified bodies still sinking in the silt
This place is nameless
Names are for places that you might want to find
Or speak of
This place
Somewhere
East of Lincoln
Where Greenteeth waits for tired souls
This place
That quiets taverns in the south
With clumsy mention of its mere existence
Still hums a guttural monotone
from within the sunken endless cloud
As England resolves just not to look,
To stare straight ahead
Centuries of bone and breast plates
Rusted long swords
And foolish boys
Drowning, sinking in the black like gently floating snow
Or falling ash
Are joined from above by plastic cutlery
Porcelain soldiers
And high-vis jackets
Like glitter in the peat
Poor sods
Fixated on some unnamed evil
They stare out into the nothingness
At an imagined horizon
And not down at where they stand
As the bog swallows their boots
And laps at their knees
They stare out
Still
Shouting anthems at a wall of grey
As the duckweed creeps around their throats
And their noses blow bubbles in the ink
England ‘til I die
And the bog will oblige
The clocks have stopped in this place
And the chatter at the burger van is of something being wrong
Deeply wrong
Nostalgia spins the compasses
Of those who might attempt to leave
Who might imagine life beyond
The liminal gloom of the marsh
And so they trudge
Just feet above Fenland tigers
Clawing up at them
In slow motion
In silence in the salt
They plod
Deaf to the whispers
Of witches waiting in The Wash
They think of war
And battlefields
And seventies television
Of justice and Kings
But in this place
All men lose their crown
Not through misplacement
But in refusal to misplace it
To walk without it
See how
They sink under its weight
Joining the arrows
Shields
And polystyrene chip trays
In muddy tombs
Lost in the undulating
Layers of sediment
Beneath the crops and forecourts
Of Nowhere Land
I write to you from the wetlands
Amongst the yawning marshes and
The deafness of the fog
The truck-stops and new roundabouts
I found my way here in grief
And, reluctant yet resigned
Join the others
Good men, mostly
Who all have their reasons
There are many rivers that lead
To The Wash.
Do not come for me
I am lost
Folklore warns of the marshes