Fogou
C.P. Nield
“Pendene Vowe… a holl or deepe vaute in the grounde, wherinto the sea floweth at high water, very farr vnder the earth: Manie have attempted, but none effected, the search of the depth of it.”
John Norden, Speculum Britanniae
Down the gate-barred, slope-slit
mouth, I crawled,
blood quick on moss
and flint shards edged
like rats’ teeth. The hole
contracted, squeezed me down,
down to the final
stone-lintelled throat,
the creep.
Dark as outer space
or hollow earth,
she bloomed, dream carved
with downward horns. I slid
face down, belly down,
worm flat,
to rise, a god,
web robed
in granite bliss.
And in my light,
grey tongues of thunder woke
and stormed,
storm-drumming hares,
called to dance the labyrinthine
deep,
the moon-ruled,
life-coiled, death-ragged
root room.
C.P. Nield’s poetry has featured in New Poetries IV (Carcanet), Footprints: an anthology of new eco-poetry (Broken Sleep Books), The Poet’s Quest for God (Eyewear) and Best Gay Poetry 2008 (Lethe), as well as such journals as The Spectator, The New Humanist, New European, Standpoint, Ambit, Agenda, Acumen, The Rialto, Magma, Stand, The Warwick Review, Poetry Wales, Temenos Academy Review, Interpreter’s House, The Keats-Shelley Review, The Christian Science Monitor, European Judaism and PN Review.
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