'One tree can't breathe for the whole world': Simon Armitage marks chainsaw felling at Sycamore Gap
The poet laureate, Simon Armitage, has written a poem to mark the destruction of the Sycamore Gap tree at Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland. Titled ‘The Holy Land’, it focuses on the “cock of the north” with a “brainless power tool” who may have committed the act. The focus on the miscreant has been taken by some to reflect Armitage’s previous life as a probation officer. The poem talks of how “the chainsaw yawned / then breezed through hundreds of years / of weather and kings and wars / and blah blah blah.”
The mood of the poem is of forgiveness and resurrection, as it talks of how the tree –“that sycamore saint” - which famously featured in the Hollywood film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, had become “a movie extra / or mindfulness poster /or Instagram pose – truth is / one tree can’t breathe / for the whole world …”. It concludes: “The carpenter’s art / begins with a death; / now build a forest, / now plant a house, / now carve a leaf.”
You can read the whole poem on Instagram here
PHOTOGRAPH: NATIONAL TRUST
M.C. Newberry
Tue 21st Nov 2023 20:44
A previous existence as a probation officer elearly enthuses
the idea of a poem of this sort. I would have preferred a sign
of the deed being seen as indicative of a poverty of love for
the landscape - and a selfish disrespect towards it that infects much of today's society. As it happened, by chance I caught SA's
Winter Walks TV programme in the early hours a few nights ago, during which he walked a five mile stretch of the Yorkshire
coastline to Robin Hood's Bay. Unexpected and pleasurable.