Landscape with Knifewound   This is a landscape abandoned by gentle giants, this edge of Cornwall where the calm and soft, continuous curve of the rising hills abruptly crashes into the ocean down sheer and raw and ravaged, windworn cliffs, down screaming depths to the boiling water — its rockface baring the throbbing, layered structure of granite beneath the stricken landscape, exposing the sundazed pith to the lashing light above and the gaze of hovering hunters: the creatures of the heights and depths that lightly approach the coastline from the ocean. But landsmen reach the coast by navigating their way along careful housing estates, rogue industries, satellite dishes and rainsoaked farms deserted by their young and the future; and they arrive entirely unprepared for the rupture, the urgent, brutal line dividing the sullen soil that covers the cliffs from the ocean washed by the splashing light — the line of violence torn across the horizon from end to end like a savage knifewound too deep and keen and sudden and surprising to hurt in the moment of its infliction. Such landscapes of the soul inherited from giants confront the innocent traveller with a surge of passion at the edge of routine experience, as in poetry or love. Thomas Land If you've any comments about this poem, Thomas Land would be pleased to hear them.