Martin Walls

Mutton Hill, or Open Letter to my Brother, John, a British Civil Servant, Who, Tired of Working in London, Longs for a Quieter Life

A copse—maple, birch—leads down to the slough, then follows a thin creek that's tucked in the crease of the meadow. The trees soon peter to lifeless stump & leafless brush, but, beneath a heavy hatch of branches, a summer of color still thrives in the shade: bronze reeds in the bog, lichen daubed on ice-heaved granite, bright dogwood & lush duckweed that's spreading across the pond like a remnant of "some giant rug, which at one time covered every inch of the City." Po Chü'I wrote that, the "balding old politician," the bureaucrat-poet. I imagine him looking down on this scene as he did on Soochow, when he was governor, or Pa, after collecting the tax; looking down happily from the high terrace at Ling-Wing. "If I choose to retire," he wrote, "I have somewhere to end my days." Because he'd rather tally the hatchlings of light in the brook than the gold in the governor's hall; weigh shadows budding in the long grass than tea packed on the dock; reckon the fine angles of bough crossing bough than the distance to his next post. He'd rather think of that marsh hawk, looking down the slide rule of hunger, & know she knows there's nothing more she needs.

Fenner, New York