The long reach - Poem

Literary Review, Wntr, 2002 by Alan Riach

The Long Reach

   On the green plains of Kent, on the Canterbury Road,
   under the highest arches of sky and the big silver banners of cloud,
   where the long low marshes of the river's south bank are north-west,
   marked by parishes, churches, graveyards, where Pip's young
   siblings'
   lozenges lie in rustling leaves at Cooling and every headstone's
   silence hides
   a Magwitch, where, to the north, Whitstable skims on its mudflat
   out into the estuary, birdsong and memories of the 1960s murders
   (a harder kind of violence than any we see much of here today),
   where,
   south-east, the sheer vanilla stone of the Cathedral and an older
   martyrdom, navigate the crowds in their small city, and where, all
   round
   the Cinque Ports, and Margate, Ramsgate, Deal, Dover, Folkestone,
   the pilot boats go out and come back in, and the pilots look back
   on the grazing sheep on Romney Marsh near the great almost
   luminous ball
   of the power station at Dungeness, and the two trees on the
   curvature of earth
   together make a rearing horse, while here, on the green curved
   plains of Kent,
   we park the car beside the pilgrims' road by a long low pub and
   stand
   beside it looking all around, from Rochester downriver to the
   crumbling cliffs
   in the south, from one bleak house to another, from over into
   France
   back up the run of the Channel, along upriver to London, and
   turn and look up once again, reading the name
   on the tiled roof there, and then lock the car, and go in.

Alan Riach, formerly Associate Professor of English and Pro-Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Waikato, New Zealand, is now Head of the Department of Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow. Riach's books include Clearances, First & Last Songs, Open Return, This Folding Map, and a critical study, & Hugh MacDiarmid Epic Poetry. Riach is also the series editor of the collected works of Hugh MacDiarmid, published by Carcanet Press.