11 SEPTEMBER 1993, Page 34

Black Earth

after Mandelstam

Manured and trodden, worked to a fine tilth, combed and quickened as a stallion's mane the earth casts up its spume of solid wealth, the stuff of freedom, my far weather-vane.

This black's so glossy, when the soil turns, that it's blue. And now we labour without tools to see that limitless old rumour breaking through the iron script of possibility.

For earth is blunt and useless as an axe held the wrong way, a bossed, indifferent head as happy with its iron-fisted oaks as to inter them when they fall down dead.

Yet how the steppe wakes to the shining steel, forcing the eye wide, wide to every hue, a giant stepping-stone to one more April.. . Earth, be my courage, my dark, speechless vow.

William Scammell