‘The Lancashire Witches’ by Carol Ann Duffy

 One voice for ten dragged this way once

by superstition, ignorance.

Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.

 

Witch: female, cunning, manless, old,

daughter of such, of evil faith;

in the murk of Pendle Hill, a crone.

 

Here, heavy storm-clouds, ill-will brewed,

over fields, fells, farms, blighted woods.

On the wind’s breath, curse of crow and rook.

 

From poverty, no poetry

but weird spells, half-prayer, half-threat;

sharp pins in the little dolls of death.

 

At daylight’s gate, the things we fear

darken and form. That tree, that rock,

a slattern’s shape with the devil’s dog.

 

Something upholds us in its palm-

landscape, history, place and time-

and, above, the same old witness moon

 

below which Demdike, Chattox, shrieked,

like hags, unloved, an underclass,

badly fed, unwell. Their eyes were red.

 

But that was then- when difference

made ghouls of neighbours; child beggars,

feral, filthy, threatened in their cowls.

 

Grim skies, the grey remorse of rain;

sunset’s crimson shame; four seasons,

centuries, turning, in Lancashire,

 

away from Castle, Jury, Judge,

huge crowd, rough rope, short drop, no grave;

only future tourists who might grieve.