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
