To a Saxon Poet

loss memory ode somber

In the snow your footprints’ trail Northumbria has often seen, and now it has forgotten, numberless the sunsets which have been between us, my grey brother. Slow, in the slow shadows, you would fashion those metaphors of swords crossed on high seas, of the horror at home among pine trees, of the solitude the days bring in. Where can one look now for your features and your name? These an already ancient darkness hides. So, I can never know just how things were when on this earth you were a man. You journeyed along roads of exile, now you live only in your poems of iron.