Collecting the Bins at Emily Bronte’s

 

                   ‘What is the matter, my little man?’ I asked.

                   ‘There’s Heathcliff and a woman yonder, under t’ nab,’ he blubbered, ‘un’ I darnut pass ’em.'

 

                    Long after she’d gone, being reborn

                     on teapots and table mats - daguerrotyped,

imaged and impressed on Bronte soap,

Bronte fudge, Bronte tea-towels - so fixed forever,

she could stare the lengths of Howarth High Street,

I collected the bins at Emily Bronte’s house.

There were two, placed firmly round the back,

a battered pair besides the iron gate:

rusting, they leaned close together, one taller,

more dented than the other. But lifting the lids,

not once, a sprite of moor’s wind bristling my hair;

not once, a lapwing’s scream, lit nest of bones,

or lightning running like a man. The bins stood

by the Parsonage window, where I set them down

on their stains. But never once, through leaded panes,

a face blank as linen, moor-scapes of winter and wild,

or lost at the edge of the room, a slight girl,

hand on cheek, inclined to write on shadows.