Explaining a few things to Neruda

You will ask why my poetry
speaks of leaves and green rivers
and that family of goosanders
spinning and diving and drifting downstream
on the ebb tide this rainy morning.

Where are the unemployed? you ask,
the litter, the broken windows,
graffiti curse-words and allegations,
the lost generation, the hope of revolution?

You will ask why my poetry is so pretty,
all those woodlands and winter skies,
when jobs are scarce and art is strangled
and freedom is bought and sold with oil.

In those fields we have no lapwings,
no hares, a stillness of yellow rape,
and wheat after barley after wheat.
The skylark song is quenched in rain.
The moon rises over green absence.

Once there were bitterns in those reeds –
salmon, kingfisher, tufted duck,
children at the village school – all gone.
We wash the guilt of extinction off our hands.
Oh see the blood of extinction on our hands!

— Elizabeth Rimmer

Published in Dark Mountain 4, an anthology of poetry, plays, prose, essays and art.

A contrast between a fairy tale and reality.

Why do we write fairy tales, not of reality?

Elizabeth Rimmer, poet, gardener and river-watcher, lives in Scotland. Her first collection of poems, Wherever We Live Now, was published by Red Squirrel Press in 2011.

The Dark Mountain Project is a network of writers, artists and thinkers in search of new stories for troubled times. We promote and curate writing, art, music and culture rooted in place, time and nature.

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