Passengers feel the train brake before they see,
from the embankment above the hectares
of marshes, the landscape begin to slow.
The many acres of grasses and flashes
have snipe, little ringed plover, lapwing,
water shrew, otter – and cattle grazing
at their edges. The River Sow flows
through the wetlands, and, far beyond the town,
joins the Trent, Ouse, North Sea. Between sedges,
low over pools in summer, swallows hunt.
We pass under the M6 viaduct,
its traffic relentless, silent above us.
On a low rise is the ruined Norman keep.
The annual Shakespeare festival
takes place with the castle as backdrop.
One of the Earls of Stafford was also
Duke of Buckingham, Richard Crookback’s
ally, implicated in the murder
of the young princes in the Tower.
Shakespeare has Richard, now King, ask the Duke,
– suspecting his betrayal – ‘What’s o’clock?’
Lastly Stafford’s two blocks of high rise flats
come into view, and the brick towers
of its nineteenth century prison.
Lesser figures from the Easter Rising,
Michael Collins among them, were held
in the gaol. There is a photo of them,
in civvies, suits and ties, crowded together
on a walkway, taken from below,
Collins fifth from the right at the back.
Someone has put a cross above his head.
By David Selzer