This poem has been in my head for days. I haven't read something so powerful for a long time and I've found it very hard to forget. The imagery of mothering turned completely on its head is startling.
Benson is another of the poets published under the Faber New Poets scheme and you can buy her pamphlet from Waterstones.
Sheep
She’s lying under a low wind
bedded in mud and afterbirth
her three dead lambs
knotted in a plastic bag.
Crows have pecked out her arse
and now the hen
that’s been circling all morning
tugs at a string of birth- meat
like she’s pulling a worm in the yard.
I can’t not watch.
I too lay stunned
in my own dirt,
the miscarried child
guttering out,
soaking the mattress in blood.
I was afraid to look down
for what I might see -
a human face, a fist.
Yet once it was done I got up,
gathered my bedding
and walked.