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White chalk hills are all I’ve known

White chalk hills will rot my bones

White chalk sticking to my shoes

White chalk playing as a child with you

White chalk south against time

White chalk cutting down the sea at Lyme

I walk the valleys by the Cerne

on a path cut fifteen hundred years ago

and I know these chalk hills will rot my bones

Dorset’s cliffs meet at the sea

where I walked, our unborn child in me

White chalk, gorse-scattered land

scratch my palms – there’s blood on my hands