The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile by Alice Oswald

I took the giant's walk on top of the world,
peak-striding, each step a viaduct.

I dropped hankies, cut from a cloth of hills,
and beat gold under fields
for the sun to pick out a patch.

I never absolutely told
the curl-horned cows to line up their gaze.
But it happened, so I let it be.

And Annual Meadow Grass, quite of her own accord,
between the dry-stone spread out emerald.

(I was delighted by her initiative
and praised the dry-stone for being contrary.)

What I did do (I am a gap)
was lean these elbows on a wall
and sat on my hunkers pervading the boulders.

My pose became the pass across two kingdoms,
before behind antiphonal, my cavity the chord.

And I certainly intended
anyone to be almost
abstracted on a gap-stone between fields.



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