The low clouds, the shreds of dry grass,
Beet leaves tufting behind the decayed fence,
The gravel path staggering blind-drunk down:
This is no English landscape, sleek as fine china,
With ancestral oaks and the family silver of a brook:
No: here the snare of a dropped fir branch
Lies across every path, trees hold charred stumps
In their midst like blackened teeth:
And in fields there’s no help from the storm-crossed showers
That have it in for everyone, even God.
Translated by Catriona Kelly