Hunting of the Hare

I

Will Somers the postman was jumpy in April.

His wide-spaced eyes

Looked at different corners of the sky.

If I opened the door to take the letters,

His sideways hazel stare never quite caught mine.

On his tongue was a coppery Sussex tang -

A relic tonality, people placing him much further

West than Worthing, he said.

I could tell he was shaping up to something

Just beyond the chink of my vision

Because he grinned and then did not,

As he hunched over his shoulder

Towards the garden gate

And then turned back to me.

‘There’s dancing on the First, at Tarring.

‘Come at the strike of dawn, or just before.

Music and leaping.’ His tawny eyebrows jittered.

Then he hefted the red mailbag

And it slumped and buckled

As if a baby was kicking inside.

II

White and green that Mayday light.

My feet the only echoes

On the churchyard path.

A dog fox passed me, going home from his work.

Crushed wild garlic,

Among the leaning gravestones.

Jinking and sawing music

Came tripping through the lychgate

Like a child’s tune, played by an old, old man.

Then racking on the spring wind I saw Will Somers come

All a twitch, in a long-eared cap

Fluting ahead of the dancers.

Such a ragged shuffle-stepping gang

With their shin bells and chaos of pied rags.

Sweat was on their chins

And their breath was frantic

Under clamped masks of cunning lurchers

Grinning badgers and quillion-beaked herons.

He led them with his concertina

As if they were all blind.

Spying me he hopped away from the beast-troop.

‘Where we’re going I don’t know. We’ll play until we fall.’

Then he jumped up, as if to grab down the sun.

In my sight he was starred for a second

Like a saltire against the light.

‘This jig, this jig ’ giggled Will.

‘Is ‘The Hunting of the Hare’

And I am the Fool.’

Steven O’Brien