Maldon's Other Battle
“Het pa hyssa hwæne hors forlætan,
feor afysan, and forð gangan,
hicgan to handum and to hige godum.”
They marched through Maldon’s streets, sire, dragging their brats,
gathering like a dustball in a slattern’s kitchen.
Aprons like grubby sails, they breasted the curve of the road,
wondering at the masts of fluyts busy on the Blackwater.
Think of it, sire. Winter was edging in. Much of what survived
was being sold by merchants to foreign mouths, but our men
can’t complain – unless they fancy prison or a stringing up.
They watch their families slowly starve, one stomach at a time.
But women are too foolish to be blamed. No brains, sire,
witless as infants, as you know. Think of your wife. Yes,
they’d heard the ships were here, Flemish or Dutch – some
foreigners from the low countries, at any rate, on their estuary,
loading up with their grain. The cheek. They couldn’t stand by,
could they, watch their lives float off? They made those sailors
load instead their aprons with the seeds they’d stolen
from their bellies. O, no, sire, men never can stand up to women,
always scared when they’re mob-handed, jeering and weeping,
dragging their tear-stained off-shoots by the wrists.
You know yourself, sire. Think of your wife. They can’t live off
acorn bread and dandelions, pottage that’s not seen a rabbit for months.
They can’t feed babies if they can’t feed themselves. And men
can’t work on air, sire. No one died – unless you count
the wretches starved or frozen as the nights drew in. No one
to be held accountable, my lord. There was none greater than
the peasant women, plotting out of sight, no mastermind.
They did it all themselves, sire. There was no man behind.
Page(s) 19
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The