A BOOK OF BONES

Waneth the watch, but
the world holdeth.
                            -Anonymous, "The Seafarer"



Dawn-sniffing revenant
plodder through midnight
rain, question me again.
                                -Seamus Heaney, "Casualty


Trackway and camp and city
lost, salt marsh where is corn; old wars, old
peace, old arts that cease,
and so was England born...
                              -Rudyard Kipling, "Puck of Pook's Hill


The thing from the churchyard
that was found with it's
hand missing
in the excavation
undertook on the north side called
Several times
wanted converse
about your assumptions.
                            -Bill Griffiths,
                           "Decorating & Insurance Factors"


This oratory looks evil.
With herbs overgrown it
fits well that fellow 
transformed into Green to
follow here his devotions
in the Devils fashion.
                         -Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
                          (trans. JRR Tolkien)

It is not what they built.
It is not what they knocked down.
It is not the houses.
It is the spaces between the houses.
It is not the streets that no longer exist.
It is not your memories which haunt you.
                         - James Fenton, "German Requiem


Out of the Ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.
                   -Sylvia Plath, "Lady Lazarus


Dire portents appeared over 
Northumbria and sorely
Frightened the people.
                    -Anonymous, "Anglo Saxon Chronicles


Besides I find this tree
hath never been
like other fruit trees, walled
or hedged in,
but in the highway standing
many a year,
It never yet was robbed, as
I could hear.
The reason apparent to our eyes,
that what it bears, are dead
commodities...
                      -John Taylor, "Description of Tyburn


I kill wher I please
because it is all mine
There is no sophistry in
my body:
My manners are tearing off heads-
                        -Ted Hughes, "Hawk Roasting"


Lo! Thy dread Empire chaos!
is restor'd;
Light hand great Anarch!
Lets the curtain fall;
And Universal darkness
Buries all.
                       -Alexander Pope, "The Dunciad"


Deflores: Yes, and the
while I coupled with your mate
At barley-break; Now we are
left in hell.
Vermandero: We are all there; It circumscribes us here.
                         -Thomas Middleton, "The Changling"

There are other places
which also are the worlds end,
some at the sea jaws,
Or over a dark lake, in a desert or a city-
But this is the nearest, in place and time,
Now and in England.
                      -T.S. Eiot, "Little Gidding from four Quartets"