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The Wife’s Complaint

I sing for that glad night to come when I may cease to weep
tell of my journey, how I grew through grief
from the promise of a flower at dawn to that black noon
when my womb shrivelled before my breasts were filled.

There was a day when proud in my girlhood
I took my man,
flaunted my love before his proud kin, thrilled
within the splendour of his bear-rugged hall.

But now I pray for one night when I may creep home
                                                         to bed my lover.
I shall blind the gilded rushes with my tears, and he
girdled by my wrinkled legs will, in mercy, love me once more
before he knows my shame
                                         for I am ugly now.

My lord left me in that darkness black crows bring,
the foreshadow of a foul dawn.
I heard the carved oak beaks thresh, sieve the bleak sea, sixteen
                                                                        oars

flails that flayed me
                               aching on an empty bed.

No man would speak, tell me of his faring.
The land-giver, as his cold white eyes stroked my shoulders,
told me my man went to a nameless place where ravens flew
                                                          to serve his kin.

I gathered me my keepsakes, crept close into my fine wool cloak
walked out to the bare hill      well shod
but beggared for lack of folk to fare with me.
For I was forsaken by my fine new kin, that I should be so
                                               proud to walk alone
for my love.

Their silky lies robbed me of friends.
Even I could not walk the seas
a solitary wanderer, eating the fish that flew
                                                         to come to him.

I was commanded to lie lonely by my lord’s chilled hearth,
                                                         where they
could see over me.
I watched their secret thoughts pry out my grief,
grapple to twist the warp and weft of our heart-fast faith,
knew their glee for my empty womb.

It was too little for their hatred.
My bride goods were taken, I was banished to a dark wet-land,
                                                           protected
fettered by grim hedges of bitter briar.

I was skinned like a slaughtered calf, condemned to crawl naked
scrabble for roots
prey upon carrion
scratch berries from the thorn,

no meat for my belly
no hide for my shame
no son for my vengeance.

My skin was white once, well haunched, my eye clear,
breasts made to suckle fine war-men.
Now I eat black beetles, spit their wing husks
into the graves of the long-dead where even the bones have
                                               gone
                                                         for remembrance.

I found a burrow the shriven hermit had deserted.
Now snarled in this gaunt hole, watch
skeletons of grey oaks choke beneath dark garlands of green ivy
scream myself to sleep
                                   silently.

Aye and so it may be

that my lord is weapon weary, his mind splintered
but always blithe, bearing arms gaily,
for my love cases his heart-cares.

Though it may be that he is to himself enough.

Or may he sit silent under a grey cliff
eyeing the ashen-headed crests of that strange sea,
scheming his coming,
kenning the drift of those deep waters home to his
                                                                       dark kin.

I heed his heart in mine
love-laden, feeling his folk loss.

What have I now?
Nipples shrunk beneath my ribs, a belly no longer fit for man’s
                                                           pleasuring,
the sole of my naked foot to scratch meaning into the black
                                                          leaves
that line my walk-ways.
                                  My heart is too dry for weeping.

I walk before the sun comes to remember my own kin,
not fine but comely, warm in their beds together,
unknowing, my fate forgotten.

I found a dead stag and his head is mine.
His horn shall be my spear, the haft of my axe,
I shall weave grey weeds for binding thongs,
each night keen the blue stone nearer to the fine edge
fit for my fine prey.

For I shall come again – together

                                                 or alone.