In conversation with Geoffrey Hill’s September Song and Two Formal Elegies



I know the dead whom you have deposed.
Welcome to New England,

pasture populated with serrated tussock teeth and African lovegrass,

the old ways lined with laurel and birch

crafting the curves of a white woman from my shallow hills. 
When all is said and done, you may tread the labour of your predecessors into the clay

underfoot, where our sinew will fertilise the vines of your exports.
I will find you there again, in the cellar below your Headington stone,

or in the dismembered artefact overlooking your life’s work.
Colour me more difficult than all your forefathers combined.
I will turn my hills back to the hunting range your people made them when they came, and I

will fill myself plenty. You will never feel enough.