My grandmother could cook it, for
she grew up by that dangerous shore
where the sea skulked without a wall
where I have seen it, tough as grass,
where silent men with rods trooped past
its salty ranks, without a glance.
Lear’s gatherer hangs perilously.
Why? So much is closed to me.
Did Shakespeare ever hear the sea?
Once, said my father, far inland,
from friend or stall, one clutch was found,
steamed, in my grandmother’s great pan.
Once, a smooth leaflet from a shop
claimed they could “source it”, but they stocked
bunched, peppered cress – Another gap.
Yet how it waved, in coast’s late light,
stalks I will never taste, could make
tenderly dark, my coast’s sly snake,
salt on my tongue, before I wake.
Alison Brackenbury is an award-winning poet. Her ninth collection, Skies, will be published by Carcanet in March
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This article appears in the 10 Feb 2016 issue of the New Statesman, The legacy of Europe's worst battle