East of here
the landscape ripples, grows dense
with ancient compounds of woods
and itinerant back lanes,
dips and drops, acrobatic,
reveals secrets, inherits itself,
pulls the boundaries from under you,
reminds you of other places you’ve been
– is like nowhere else at all.
Rolls and spools along the
A5’s spine, draws a line
at the motorway’s hard shoulder
then beds down, irons out
towns between the clouds and warehouses.
It ranges thick and derelict,
shadows strange familiar terraces with
hosiery mills, shoe factories, long
boarded up and passed into
the afterlife of a thousand trades.
Accents lift and lilt
with the Soar in the water table
watering up to the north,
planning vowels flat to the south,
whilst the sky grows and falls
lean and flat-out into the Fens.
The Voyage: Edited by Chandani Lokuge & David Morley Page 16