Ars Poetica
—Yet still we edge down clutching Special clippers to collect it, Hoping to find it hanging out Where rib one would expect it, Looking to catch it unawares, All richly green, and blooming Within our fingers' nimble grasp, Before it sees us coming.
If gathering rosebuds should be quite A profitable doddle, And nuts in May might sell OK, Our samphire brings in sod-all; But following daily such a dread- ful trade to earn a living, With every second on that cliff So cruel and unforgiving, Is fine — as long as no one comes And asks us what we do there . . . We'd have to say, Without our toil, Just who would guess it grew there? 0 here we go a-gathering The samphire from the crannies, Inside the little baskets woven For us by our grannies.
Two hundred feet below, the rocks, And up above, the spaces, And here the wind that thumps us while The rain runs down our faces.
Alan Brownjohn
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