gmb website - fishermen with ploughs

Around us a muted din
     Of fiddles and feet,
          Circlings of bread and ale.
This room we are in
     At the seaward side, is still.
          I turn a cold sheet.

Midnight. The shoal drifts
     Like a host of souls unborn, along the shore.
          The tide sets from the west.
His salt hand shifts
     From tumult of thigh and breast
          To the hard curve of an oar.

© GMB 1971

published 1971
Hogarth Press
hard cover

published 1979
Chatto and Windus
with Hogarth Press
first paperback edition

Reviews
' ... a superb story-teller in verse, a master of concision and gravity.'
Alan Brownjohn