Bamburgh Castle

(Scade)

Bebenburgh

Soft dunes roll under tossing, wafted grasses

They shoulder the heaving bulk of grunting waves

that dissipate in frothy trickles

on tea spilled, sea-soaked sands of talc

Ochre-silted, the rock-knocked sea

is rocking boats, rolling corpses

and washing care-worn carcasses:

their sea-scudded blue remnants

shredded like storm-torn kelp

Reedy grasses sing and sizzle

their sand-swept sussurations

drilling the mind’s ear

forever in the moment, while -

from a moment long passed -

a hilltop bulk of stone imposes humility

on our holiday hearts

What sustenance have you known

What sacrifice and cruel society

whose forbearance alone outshines

our most heroic effort?

We are but wittering seabirds

shitting in your galleries

standing sojourn on fallen battlements

and echoing down the well

What voices have slapped those

same sunken stones

in this darkness,

in this wish-splashed drink

the centre of snaking plots

rowed, sailed and ruined;

these forgotten secrets of soft sand

and saline threshing?

Some cast a mad vision

of greatness brought through sneaky slaughter

Yet the slain arose, vapourous

in these hot walls, where temporal trail

shines out along the strand

Deaf to cannon, impervious

to herbal persuasions -

even old poems still hold sway

beyond the fallen rose

beyond the beheaded, forgetful histories

The warriors yet show

a sylvine streak

of familial comfort

Now. Now we know ancestral might