I
From the banks of turbid Rother, mucky suds
foaming on the autumn spate, through
fretwork of osier and screening bulrush, I
saw sword-edge strike and shield-wall
splinter, on the heath at Brunanburh.
Jarls and princes fell, Owein, Strathclyde’s King;
the slaughterfield tussocked with the dead.
My vision pooled blood. Garlic thickened in the
bankside silts. Voles plopped, moorhens
slunk away: iron set in my crouching
bones.
Sword-slit ship-man crawling in the surge, waxy
as tallow; the current whips him away.
Dewfall, blindlight. Shouts breaking like
stars in the rout to the river, tumult of
thundering horsethegns.
II
On Weondune, holy hill, the grass-slope greased
with guts, I creep with purse-nets, metal
detector, the Observer’s Book of Bird’s
Eggs. I peg and dig and delve.
Whose is this land? The grass grows brittle on
the leaching bones of Scots; golf club
groundsmen weed and spray; farmers
lurk, keepers oil their shotguns.
With needle and cotton, I converted my parka to
a coat of many pockets; catchstitch,
backstitch, my opus anglicanum. On the
right-of-way by STRICTLY PRIVATE, I
walk quickly and keep my head down,
ignoring shouts and torchbeams:
partridge-pearled, furred with coneys,
lining full of coin—Aethelstan, rex totius
britanniae.
III
That day the cows were restive. We were up near
The Ship, spinning for pike, when they
started their urgent lowing. They jostled
behind us before launching for the river,
tipping Tosh and his tackle into the
herded flow. They hauled out on the bank
and shook like dogs.
A puce-faced farmer came with a bobby and tore
up our day tickets; some lads had killed a
calf with idlebacks. We packed up, waited
hours in the sun at Ulleskelf station.
The Scots and ship-men threw down their
weapons and leapt into the stream. I
watched them founder from the crown of
a streamside alder.
Learn more about the poet at his website.
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