I buy this map for my Italian friend Who in her hand-hemmed skirts at the war’s end Lived here; longs to go back. Her Romans built the knife-straight major road, Not that which wandered villages, I drove. Here are their names. Go back. Hemswell and Harpswell, Blyborough, Patchett’s Cliff- That limestone ridge we laboured up, whose rift Sang water under land, The spring’s thin pulse beside the thrush’s stone A scoop of yellow shell, song’s bubble gone, Out of the noon’s flat land. Vast fields were sprayed by planes. The people kept Their kindness, but grew sad before they slept, Lincolnshire’s curse, black blood. Though skies bloomed, they blew higher in the Fens. The cod’s salt coast lay out of sight, land’s end, Laws, votes, remote, slowed blood. Will Elena find high lanes choked by cars The swede field crammed with houses, strange as Mars? Will she mourn going back? What makes or breaks us rides us to the end: I murmur, like the spring, each name I send, Brigg, Riby, Horkstow Grange, my long-lost friend, I never shall go back. by Alison Brackenbury

art by Donald Zirilli