A timely celebration of our sadly threatened rivers featuring a rich accumulation of images that in other hands might seem a little over the top but which Ted Hughes carries off by sheer brio.

The syntax of the last two lines is a bit elliptical, and I’m not clear if we’re talking about an actual salmon, leaping, or whether the salmon, the sow of solid silver, is the river itself, swollen with March rain and glittering in the spring sun, rising as if to behold the golden treasure of kingcups that it has bestowed on the land.

Either way the use of the word ‘sow’ here may seem odd, but it may or may not be relevant that historically a ‘silver pig’ was a hollowed out lead ingot filled with silver ore, as in the title of Lindsey Davis’s first Falco book set in ancient Rome and Roman Britain, ‘The Silver Pigs’.

The River in March

Now the river is rich, but her voice is low.
It is her Mighty Majesty the sea
Travelling among the villages incognito.

Now the river is poor. No song, just a thin mad whisper.
The winter floods have ruined her.
She squats between draggled banks, fingering her rags and rubbish.

And now the river is rich. A deep choir.
It is the lofty clouds, that work in heaven,
Going on their holiday to the sea.

The river is poor again. All her bones are showing.
Through a dry wig of bleached flotsam she peers up ashamed
From her slum of sticks.

Now the river is rich, collecting shawls and minerals.
Rain brought fatness, but she takes ninety-nine percent
Leaving the fields just one percent to survive on.

And now she is poor. Now she is East wind sick.
She huddles in holes and corners. The brassy sun gives her a headache.
She has lost all her fish. And she shivers.

But now once more she is rich. She is viewing her lands.
A hoard of king-cups spills from her folds, it blazes, it cannot be hidden.
A salmon, a sow of solid silver,

Bulges to see it.

Ted Hughes