Dark Age Sands

This is not how we planned it,

the careful sift stratified to mechanical layers,

a mosaic of meaning in the shattered soil.

Bury this and it comes back to you,

black particles that might be anything,

burnt beads preset from the bad day

the guttering candle’s wick extinguished

to eclipse when the princedom shattered.

Barbarians displaced in the dirt,

showing broken nosed contempt

for Imperial eagle bent double in retreat.

Shaking hands hold a ruined roundhouse

atomised by time,

a settlement of five hundred years,

backbone of this place that became nothing

by unblinking carnage of hoarded days.

 

Beneath this contour fold, field beneath

may be stained with torment,

displaced grains a storehouse that bards had laid,

replacing something now darker,

which remains.

 

Monks’ town this was, bell toll decades,

who keened before plainsong

(palimpsest of incessant wind),

bitter coronach when longships came.

Before then, shanty lands under

the shadow of forest haunting rogues.

Boy from the vici brought down

by backhand blow from

Samarian horseman,

enraging with his tribal blood.

Blood of a five thousand youths

who rose when Rome left,

whose lineage sanctified

as kings.

Latin fools put aside all learning

that day,

knowing which way spear

may glisten in a keener wind.

 

When Collum Cill

(rageful saint with royal blood)

demanded Christ- brother Oran

be buried alive in the tide line

to claim the blood price

of his island forever,

he knew the cost that is now

forgotten.

Bury it and the lineage silt

rises in the throat,

mistletoe choking the oak

of knowledge growing,

root to canopy half alive

with flames.