PROLOGUE
The Beloved’s bairns are Bold Light
and blind Dark Battle
Clever One fashions a dart
from a birdlime twig
teaches Dark how to play darts
helps him throw his twig
at Bold Light. The light goes out.
The Beloved weeps in grief.
Clever One has two sons,
The Threaping One is turned
into a wolf who tears apart
his brother, Thin. Thin’s
entrails harden into iron.
Clever One is bound to three
stones with these iron entrails.
A snake drips venom
on Clever’s bonce causing
him pain, so his wife called
Victory’s Friend collects
the drips in a bucket
before they reach his head,
only when she leaves
to empty the bucket
more drips bounce off
his bonce and he writhes
in pain and earth quivers
till the World’s end.
ALWAYS WORLD’S END
as outside dark and chill sets in
thas snug in World’s End pub
far side of Knaresborough Bridge
that’s fallen dahn twice,
and another fall means end
of all tha knows and loves
tha’ll ponder false
Mam Shipton’s prophecies
and teddies calcifying
in Petrifying Well
and raise tha ale up in celebration
when three winters without summers
wolves eat sun and moon
stars disappear in sky,
earthquakes shake mountains
uproots trees, all binds snap
beasts break loose,
Clever One’s iron bonds break.
Sup as deep ocean twists, writhes
whips land, spits poison stains
on earthshift, soiltremble.
Swig as a keratin ship of the dead’s
untrimmed fingernails
and toenails captained
by the Clever One
planks made of little moons
loosens
from its moorings
so tha munt gi thee dead folk
a decent pedicure afore tha buries
or burns them to fine urn ash.
Grieve at tha empty glass
as red cock crows to the big lads
and lasses, golden cock
to the bosses, a third cock
raises the dead
Fetch thi sen another gil
as a bloody maw has one jaw
scrape earth, the other sky
swallows all in-between
as it gapes
a boot on the lower
and a hand on the upper
jaw pushes them apart
widens the mouth into death
Enjoy thee fag outside
as earth’s ash tree
One Eye’s gallows
shivers and shakes
as its roots are
bitten in two.
Tha folk set on each other,
hard is it as lads and lasses
shag owt with a pulse
fist-time, boot-time,
sense sundered
gust-time, beast-time
as tha waits on.
“Hurry up please. It’s time.”
AFTER WORLD
Glow flicks open
eyelids of morning after
bleary mist of another
day, another time.
Fields unsowed
bear ripened fruit,
all ills grow better,
Bold Light comes back.
Earth rises again from sea,
beautiful and green.
Verve and Zest, lad and lass
hidden in the wood,
beneath earth’s ash
One Eye’s gallows
sup morning dew.
Sun has a daughter
who follows
same path
as her mam.
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