The unknown I shall know

Here's one of my very favourite Norman Nicholson poems, which he wrote in 1940 and is taken from his pictured 'collected-works':


No Man's Land

I have heard crack the warning
Ice, alone,
By the debated track
Scotched on bare stone.

I have traversed the salient,
Been aware of
The cairn beyond the next cairn,
The menace in a sheep's cough;

The snaring bog,
The threat of nightfall,
The sniper's cue
In the snipe's call;

The whisper like silence
In the hollow of the force
That booms over the cleft ledge
Bombarding its course.

The alert crag,
The skulking mist:
Is it behind that or this,
The clenched unflinching fist?

What is it?
What is there?
At bay on startled heels,
I challenge the blank air.

Stockstill. Take my bearing: I know
Every quarry in the valley, every chock-
stone in the gully, every gutter in the ghyll ...
I do not know that rock.

Faltered;
Turned back.
Sought cover beside a friendly dyke,
Or a furry haystack.

Nor does the camouflage of summer
Allay my doubt:
From among the zigzag bracken
The snake's head looks out.

In the blue night sky
Above the bilberry knoll
The unthawed stars
Point to the wintry Pole.

I have fled to the lowlands,
Called my thoughts in;
Entrenched between houses
I have saved my skin;

With a thousand watts
Patrolled the dark;
Caged my linnet,
Policed the park.

But on the skyline
The gaunt fell
Taunts me with slate shoulders.
And I know well

I shall break this truce
And one day again
I shall go to the black tarn
Slaked with rain;

The unknown I shall know,
Though how to do
May take all my living to learn,
Or dying too.

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Norman Nicholson (1914 - 1987)

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