Edwytha’s Plait: Eighth Tattersby

 

 

The Folly

Tattersby

 

 

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Edwytha’s Plait

 

Terror, when it comes, warms the night

Fallen close and hard of breath

like a parachute’s muffling silk and chill

Night

Borne opaque the face of pity

Mirrored in the watcher’s eye

The plain below

Sinking to the cataract

Emerging hidden under rock

Mimicking Edwytha’s plait

The waters keen

And he has never known this name

 

For since the Celtic daughter’s hour

They have not called it so

They throng

Crania lift hollow sockets, smile

Sadly aware

They are death’s heads void of nuance

Smile of all the world’s news

A rational man, de Clieux tells his companion

Would call this fog

Have you really left your bed to join me?

Miss Harvey says, for this time

 

That was my great disappointment…it has been.

So many, but Edwytha does not come

When the sun was high yet, before the warning clouds

Before the settling mists had veiled her iron locks

You’d seen her forged there, giantess laid low

Long ribboned tresses bound in woven stone

Edwytha’s resting place, our spirit home

I, monsieur, too much a goddess from the cradle

Not to dream of honour, how I’d fly

The day I’d won a guardian’s grave

And mounted to the sky

 

The council first resolved

To bargain with our poverty of gold

Yea, this, we give in tribute, Romans!

All we have

My brothers, each with ceremony draws the silver brooch

From his cloak, and from his hair

Ceremony

That for this solemnity our enemy suppose

We yield before their potent Jupiter

We bury our own

 

 

 

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Tattersby

Not Wanted Here: Ninth Tattersby

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(2017, Stephanie Foster)