Saturn

(after W. G. Sebald)

On small hills where the rings are broken
and by trees. Un-switched-on lighthouses
demobbed and stiff in black pools where
there is an orbit of moony crabs. Surely
that can’t be light from a boarded-up
hotel. A circle – a perfect maze (and we know
from science that a blindfolded man can’t walk
in a dead straight line.) Sulphuric rain
has destroyed these lips. Trout and elm
also. And blinded statues. Things on stilts
must keep moving. Curlew; houses. Rot is
the only alternative where heatless alchemy
turns everything to gas, and goshawks
are still crucified: a limited alphabet of ‘X’s
and ‘T’s decorating blank spinneys and unstraight
defective groynes.