Fire-blown mounds of ash do swirl
About a charred pathetic doll
With one surviving dead man’s eye
Whose eyelid flickers back no more


Torn up like a tethered fox
Mail-shirt bloody, helmet gone
Sinking in the ooze of death
Upon the hungry battle-mire


A crash of sliding masonry
As a church wall mourns
The king’s hall burns forlorn
Like the world tree


Laying low at land anchor
A survivor peers across the muddy field
Naked trees like sticks
He retreats into a ditch
As, drifting from the smoke,
The ghosts of a viking host march forth
Wolf-creations, struggle-weary
Bloodied axes hanging


The spy lies back
Earworn by gnarled yarling
Considers the greed of man
Where no church or school
Might ever stand again


With muddy water in his ears
He tries to remember better years
Rowing across a goose-fed mere
With a curvesome lady companion
How they found a golden bed
Hidden in the lofty reeds
Where, with finches twittering, they made love
With full warm tenderness
And the breeze rippled across the water


The thud of heavy boots
A song not overmood
Wakes the warrior from his dream
With black-toothed grin and priest's gold chain
A bearded carl raises his sword
And, with a curdling roar,
Thrusts it into the lover’s heart