ABSTRACT
Well in my many walks I rarely found A place less likely for a bird to form Its nest close by the rut gulled waggon road… This voice, once heard, is unmistakable. Its public name is John Clare but beyond that hard-pressed and often uncertain identity it is a way of seeing and writing – often writing as speaking: ‘well in my many walks’– which is a state of being, a condition of existence, long before and after it can be formally defined. … And on the almost bare foot-trodden ground With scarce a clump of grass to keep it warm And not a thistle spreads its spears abroad Or prickly bush to shield it from harms way And yet so snugly made that none may spy It out save accident – and you and I Had surely passed it in our walk to day Had chance not led us by it … The find is the nest of a pettichap; one of the warblers. As the poem continues the nest is intensely observed and described. Yet although the observation is precise and sustained it is the voice that stays with us: a rare but common voice.
