Listen to the world’s best poetry read out loud.

The women of the Gower ride out on their donkeys, 

bundled up round and rolling with the pony carts, 

stretched out in a line, following the tide’s edges. 

They are going to gather the cockles 

left on the shore by the ebb. 

Theirs is a hard life, at times ten miles 

to the cockle beds. They carry their rakes and sieves, 

carry their boots laced around necks 

to save the leather, carry their husband’s names,  

the Davis’s and the Hughes of Penclawdd, 

round as the rolling of the pony carts. 

No shirking even on wintery mornings; 

in the mud flats, they sieve all the small stuff out 

and leave them to grow on,  

taking only the three year old cockle 

with its rings like the rings of a tree. 

They take care to lift their skirts,  

squat to a piss, away from the cockles 

with their little open mouths.    

Sometimes twelve hundred women bundled round  

picking the cockles on the beach. And then  

they ride home on their donkeys, home to the men 

rolling wider and rounder, sacks full to the brim; 

with the cockles that click and clack 

and mutter as they sway.