Miles, and nothing alive

though an oystercatcher

calls somewhere, sadly.

Dykes twist to the horizon.

Where are the men who built them?

Gone to Nova Scotia

with their pipes and neckerchiefs.

On either side of the walls,

new wire restrains livestock

that’s not there either,

to show that someone, somewhere,

owns this land, has a grant to prove it.

I climb, emerge onto the crest,

and a hare bounds off into cloud.

On top, with its boulders and sheep skulls,

its faint scars of ditch,

with a hollow wind through the thorns,

Grennan nails empty land to empty sky.