C.H. Sisson: The Hare

I saw a hare jump across a ditch:
It came to the edge, thought, and then went over

Five feet at least over the new-cut rhine

And then away, sideways, as if thrown

— Across the field where Gordon and I walked

Talking of apples, prices and bog-oak,

Denizens of the country, were it not

That denizens do not belong, as they do

And the hare tossing herself here and there.

And I? If I could, I would go back

To where Coombe Farm stood, as Gordon's stands

Trenched in antiquity and looking out

Over immense acres not its own

And none the worse for that. You may say

It is the sick dream of an ageing man

Looking out over a past not his own.

But I say this: it is there I belong

Or here, where the pasture squelches underfoot

And England stirs, forever to hold my bones.

You may boast of the city, I do not say

That it is not all that you say it is

But at the Last Judgement it will stand

Abject before the power of this land.

Published 1984. The poem copies the hare's jump and sideways swerve until it arrives at the still point of the final quatrain, which is magnificent.