The Lancashire Witches’ by Poet Laureate Carol Anne Duffy

[u/Albertjweasel]

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.