Try, try again, is always spider's say
that Robert* learned, it's said, to beat them back,
the Sassenach - that's my folk, by the way,
or is it? Are They? In genetic hack
seventy per cent is Celtic. A.S.
(Anglo-Saxon) whistles on top pig sty,
and then the Viking nobles and, God curse,
the Norman nobles too, my Harold's eye!
But there's a smidgen Roman maybe;
and they do say the Alans* running flak
gave us our grail and Arthur, deeped in myth.
I like to think the ginger goes right back
to some Neanderthal woman, hairy Eve,
and limp when history whispers I'm too stiff!
......................
*Robert The Bruce, a Scottish King who beat back the English form Scotland. He was supposed to have watched a spider building again after her web was destroyed.
*The Alans were a tribe coming out of the steppes. Their women were warriors too if they wished it and were buried with military honours if they had been.
*Not forgetting the Dutch. Then after all that the Empire and the colonies and the responsibility and immigration and the the prejudice and the accommodation - and the principle of being a part of the world as well as part of Europe that Fascists will always deny.
YOU ARE READING
Wintering
PoetryIt's yet another MajorSeventh. Hop on the big shoulders and look ... Lastest poems are always posted last in my collections. Winter. So, expect sparse gardens, late autumn and wintry countryside, wry philosophy and humour, tenderness towards litt...
