Alice Oswald

Alongside Beans

Text settings
Comments

weeding alongside beans in the same rush as them

6 a.m. scrabbling at the earth

beans synchronised in rows

soft fanatical irresponsible beans

behind my back

breaking out of their mass grave

at first, just a rolled up flag

then a bayonet a pair of gloved hands

then a shocked corpse hurrying up in prayer

and then another

and then (as if a lock had gone and the Spring had broken loose)

a hoverfly

not looking up but lost in pause

landing its full-stop

on a bean leaf

(and what a stomach bursting from its zips

what a nervous readiness attached to its lament and

using the sound as a guard rail over the drop)

and then another

and after a while a flower

turning its head to the side like a bored emperor

and after a while a flower

singing out a faint line of scent

and spinning around the same obsession with its task

and working with the same bewitched slightly off-hand look as the sea

covering first one place

and then another

and after a while another place

and then another

and another

and another

Alice Oswald’s poetry has won three Forward prizes and a T.S. Eliot prize; her most recent collection is Memorial.