Friday, 29 November 2024

One Poem by David Barber

 





Excalibur

 

                            

Old these hills and old the stone,  

Ploughed the grave and broke the bone; 

Long the grass on paths forgot 

To camps and kingdoms which are not; 

Lost the songs of feast and raid, 

Dead the king and rust his blade. 
 

Earth                           

The underworld has swallowed men before. 

Thieved from the earth, the ore attracts  

bad luck like wasps to sweetness, 

and if the blood of animals 

 

is not sacrifice enough, 

the debt is paid by offering 

a newborn, the head of a captive.  

 

Fire 

The sorcerer keeps his creature hid,  

late into the night there is panting, 

a cough of sparks, the spoor of slag, 

fire sweating bright droplets from ore.  

 

Hard metal beaten to his will, 

hobbled and wrathful, he alone  

draws from dull rock the sharp sword. 

 

Air 

Raised in the battled air, sun-struck, 

the blade reaps a harvest of foes. 

Swordless, men are merely 

robbers, cattle-thieves, bullies.  

 

After its first taste of blood,  

a warrior names his sword; 

its hilt more eager for his hand. 

 

Water                           

Who would risk the wrathful blades  

of slain men? Sunken in water, 

left to grow old with the earth's wife,  

their spite is blunted. Tales are told 

      

of lonely places, curlew-haunted, 

where the sky’s mirror shivers 

and a sword once offered itself.



By David Barber



                 

 

 

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