On the Roaches

I

Afternoon in late April

cold under lumbering cloud,

descend between moss'd trees

unleafed and half in leaf,

among grey shapes in stone,

fallen legendary giants

asleep in the upspring

of bilberry and heather.




Earth gapes suddenly to reveal

a rock-walled underworld

narrowing near shoulder width.

Grass tufts peer over the edge;

a tree rooted in the cleft

lifts its head like one emerging

from a tomb. Here in Lud's church,

Gawaine encountered the Green Knight.

We listen to their tale, survivor

from a remote generation;

our re-shaping of its words

sounds among green ancient trees

the same rocks overhanging.




Along the ridge to Roach End

shapes of landscape seen and named

pronounce another mystery

more ancient even than Gawaine;

Roaches, Hen Cloud, Shuttlingslowe,

Cloud's End, with more distant Mow Cop

peering over its shoulder.

Stray flakes float on the wind

like torn paper, then suddenly

a magic stone whirls in the air

engulfs us.



II

Tucked under the cliff overhang,

among scattered boulders and trees,

the cottage, becastled,

mock-Gothic, lifts a faint blue blade

of chimney smoke. The hermit,

black-bearded, sudden,

greets us as true pilgrims

have always been greeted,

with a story. Though of their world

it is not Sir Gawaine

or the Green Knight he tells,

not even in this enchanted place

or barely-opened greenery,

where substance and shadow are one,

seen and half seen.

No, it is a monstrous tale

of attempted eviction

and greedy inheritors

he has resisted year by year

in vain lopping off heads which grow

the more he cuts. Next year

he will not be here; he gestures

and with a magician's sense of timing

vanishes into his fortress.




We climb the Cliff face by steps

the moment revealed, and emerge

once more into the wind and whirling snow.

The landscape clears. Pointed peaks oppose

blue levels of that Cheshire plain,

where Jodrell Bank cups to catch

at hints of other worlds, none, surely,

stranger than this. Yellow claw-scars

mark worked-out sand quarries,

lorries grind through tough gradients

on the Leek-Buxton road,

and Sir Gawaine haunts the dark ravine,

waiting to attempt once more

his ghostly adversary.








Copyright © Bernard Gilhooly - All Rights Reserved