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WARRICK WYNNEThe Wetlands (for Liam & Andrew)It has become one of life's buried places;parallel lines,river and road,wetlands, levees.The waters brim darkbrown above our heads,banks thick with dark mud -like that drenched English landscapewhere, after six thousand years,a man was removedfrom the layered peatwith a noose still around his neck,legs pulled up close to a chestsnuggling under the warm weightof all that earth.Here, guard dogshowled in the distance,invisible leashes,the extended horizon.There was a placewhere we stoppedand it is gone.It is a buried place.Do you remember the lines?How straight they were?The scrappy paddocksground like soaked sponge,the limitless skypressing it flat.You had a puncture,and we stopped in the cold,in the flatness below a bank,on the uncomfortable flat rim,grey stones sharp as knives.The wind from a long way away.Water transporting itself somewhere.That place is buried now,the lines that led us there,under the unendurable earth.Some things cannot be raised up.58WESTERLY, No.2, JUNE, 1989