Ogre

In the kingdom of Bryneich

Verging on a muddy crook of Coquet

A dice of houses cast with clay and sheepdung

Through a soup of starlit peatsmoke

Gradually emerges as we descend

Bring the goose my child!

I carve a notch into the squirming post

It smells like a smithy

Hurry now and drink the bowl before it congeals

There comes frightful news from town

Of great evil abound

The heartbroken potter's idiot boy was snatched from the speltfield

Scouring a fortnight in the hills

All they found, pointing from a sett, a small grey hand

Tie the goats to my cot

With tansy rags their faces cover

Push straws into the windows

Damp the coals, and bar the door with hornbeam limb

Blinding colours leap

Along bemirrored tower walls

Stretching as far as the eye can see

I am woke in icy beads

By a clamour coming from the broadbeans

The snapping of stems and a foul-smelling bloom

Paralysed I watch my child's breath

Glide like a jellyfish across the black morning

When the Sun is climbing

We'll find the harrow smothered in slime

When the Sun is climbing

We'll put it in the dog's noses

When the Sun is climbing

We'll break upon the heath

When the Sun is climbing

We'll dash across the Ringing Meadow

When the Sun is climbing

We'll weather a storm of living needles

When the Sun is climbing

We'll tarry by the Pool of Plenty

When the Sun is climbing

We'll hurry down the Valley of Eagles

When the Sun is climbing

We'll hear the distance of the North Sea

When the Sun is dying

We'll cross the Causeway of No Memory

When the Sun is dying

Our trees will billow into dunes

When the Sun is dying

We'll wade around the shoreline

When the Sun is dying

The algae as a nap of fire

When the Sun is dying

Below the surface of the water

When the Sun is dying

In the face of the cliff a ghastly doorway

When the Sun is dying

We'll pitch a tent of pigskin on the beach

When the Sun is dying

The ebbing tide will soon reveal its secrets