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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