PICKINGS

Poetry from NHI publications

BASIL'S LAND
The gentle Northern tongue travel took not from me, the Scots would not look on, Southrons would sing wrong, I heard in tree and dale, beck and fell, but only one who used the sound well where Yorkshire is south, Stainmore the backbone, opened his mouth, made notes drip from stone where high on the fell a windswept tree looked out, saw the scars of the sea, forces, an estuary, in his own land only Northern mid-light, a vocabulary of vision, solitude, delight.
SALLY EVANS

BASIL'S LAND

The gentle Northern tongue
travel took not from me,
the Scots would not look on,
Southrons would sing wrong,
I heard in tree and dale,
beck and fell,
but only one
who used the sound well
where Yorkshire is south,
Stainmore the backbone,
opened his mouth,
made notes drip from stone
where high on the fell
a windswept tree looked out,
saw the scars of the sea,
forces, an estuary,
in his own land only
Northern mid-light,
a vocabulary of vision,
solitude, delight.

SALLY EVANS

from
Briggflatts Visited
ISBN 0 903610 17 5

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This page last updated: 14th November 2006.