ELEGY

North of the French king's castle, sea thickens
against land; is, for a time, discreet; keeps
from us land-bound creatures tidings of visitation
better than any castle, which can keep nothing long.

Since sea sundered land from land, Thames
from Rhine, so it's been: circumscribed lives
of hunting-spear and plough, getting of children and
small wealth, betrayal by brother and season:

seldom a thought from generation to generation
for what the sea spews up (the sea always
spews something up at full); and then shock,
fear, casting of spear, harnessing the plough,

generation once more. Those bands who chose the longer
crossing, that was what they found: who can doubt it?
Standing on hard sand or rock, marking the pull
of the tide, making sure to haul their ships further up

or burn them in token of earnestness, they strode
inland, finding small farms in cleared forests, hearing
grunting of hogs in the trees, smelling rain
in the wind: no question, it smelt like home.

II

Water: woodsmoke: war: constants and masks
of the northern world, that mediate conflict and grief
to a story all can accept. High mounds on the ness
look to no mound on the heavy waters,

whoever lies under. We make our songs for the dragon-
slayer, let the sailors who lead him to his rich hoard
cheat wind, gauge current never so well: we
pay no mind to who brews the hero's mead, breeds

his avengers, mourns him (it may be, truly - now we can
never know). When the gorged crow can totter only, lines
of demarcation, unfealty, lineage, faith are words
to satisfy scholars and ponderous posterity.

Trapped under the grey skies of Northumbria, what
was there to do but take the road north or west,
south, even, when Mercian pride and pence pricked
their difficult people? Sometimes they won, even,

extended themselves sometimes - were killed, perhaps
carted home from Pentland, where they'd done
their duty as it was told them. Not a few
lived many years to learn their failings from men

and the biting beasts that crawled up their crosses,
mocking the faith they didn't bring with them, mingling
with Wayland Smith's tale and cut runes, mocking
the cross, straight lines figuring a fancied simplicity.

III

So it was: at the dark end of a short
day, in the smoked hall, mead and ale passing
from them to retainers, butchered hogs above or
before them, in flea-bite necklaces they kept their court,

heard echoes of the folk's many forkings,
common song of Englishkind, and were yet provincial
after the early years, too far from sun and the French
to matter much, though the painted folk plagued them

and they the painted folk. They held fair to what
they had, Thunor's champing kine or the powerful
cross that could unkey the doors of the fabulous kingdom.
Theirs was just fact, rock and water and Wall

which they wondered at; built from; ruled, briefly -
mere work of giants, not much use to men, certainly
no good to keep out the further North, simpler
to go on as if it weren't: weren't they kings?

At least they spared themselves the Wall-builders' folly, never
believed what they made was for all time, were
pleased if it lasted their days, which seldom happened.
That seldom happens: they were aware of that.

IV

Where they were kings there's little to show
for them: rock more naked to the sky, that's
as grey as they knew: a smaller forest, and that
tamer than it was; no need for hunting-spears now.

The Wall - that's what we see, and roads straight
as southerners make them; towns (York was never
much to their taste, though the church used it); strong-
holds made to force the land's people to forget

to whom they used to give loyalty. Heaven's Field?
That's a debatable place, no-one can show it you -
there's no fixed monument. When Welsh kings and
English heathens led men against them, they did

what was needed, made no pretence of saving
civilisation, which they took where they found it.
They did what they knew they must, which we all
do; they died; left no Alfred brooches, no Alnwick walls,

no names to vie with Offa or Harold or all
that came after, no bloodlines inbred as Chillingham
cattle; left their people, which is also something
we all do; left, outliving all, their language,

rasping and liquid, cadent like the land's pipes,
music they made and passed on, which must be
their epitaph. Don't look for another; but suppose, no
thought of any such thing was ever in mind.