GILLIAN CLARKE

Waterfall

We parked the car in a dusty village

That sat sideways on a hill over the coal.

We heard a rag-and-bone man

And a curlew. The sun for the first time

Put a warm hand across our shoulders

And touched our winter faces.

We saw summer, one lapwing to go,

Her mate was in the sky already,

Turning over, black, white bellied

While she, looking browner near the ground.

Tidied the winter from her crisp field.

We climbed the mountain, crossed the round

Of it, following the marshland down to the gorge.

The water was gathering minutely everywhere

Knowing its place and its time were coming.

Down over the boulders in the death bed

Of an old river, through thin birches and oaks,

Going where the water went, into the multitude

Of the shouting streams, no longer sleeping

To each other, silenced by what the water said.

Closer to crisis the air put cold silk

Against our faces and the cliffs streamed

With sun water, caging on every gilded

Ledge small things that flew by mistake

Into the dark spaces behind the rainbows.

The path led me under the fall to feel

The arc of the river and the mountain's exact

Weight; the roar of rain and lapwings

Leaving; water-beat, heart-fall in accord,

Curlew-call, child-cry on the drum's skin

Distinguished from the inmost thoughts of rivers.

We cage our response in the roar, defer

Decision while water falls. It gathers its life

On our behalf, leaps for us, its chords

Of change that curve across the cliffs

Are only, after all, an altering of level

To where it belongs, though the falling appals.