Richard Bonfield
Sutton Hoo Helmet
Who gazed through these moonless eyes
And lay within this ghostly ship?
For thirteen hundred acid years
The thief of time devoured his gifts,
Yet even time could not dissolve
The timeless glint of timeless gold,
The bird that framed these moonless eyes
That gazed out over storm-lit skies.
His soul flew briefly through the hall,
Then arced through windows dark and tall.
He flew into the pagan night,
Or did he find the light of Christ?
He lies between these drifting lands,
A shifting soul on shifting sands,
A Janus look back and forth
From Christian south to Viking north.
To Valhalla or Avalon,
To which one has the storm cock gone?
A weathervane upon a hill,
His spirit drifts about here still.
And lay within this ghostly ship?
For thirteen hundred acid years
The thief of time devoured his gifts,
Yet even time could not dissolve
The timeless glint of timeless gold,
The bird that framed these moonless eyes
That gazed out over storm-lit skies.
His soul flew briefly through the hall,
Then arced through windows dark and tall.
He flew into the pagan night,
Or did he find the light of Christ?
He lies between these drifting lands,
A shifting soul on shifting sands,
A Janus look back and forth
From Christian south to Viking north.
To Valhalla or Avalon,
To which one has the storm cock gone?
A weathervane upon a hill,
His spirit drifts about here still.
Author's Note: The Sutton Hoo helmet is associated in the popular imagination with Beowulf, the hero figure of the eigthth century poem of the same name which lies like a great Viking burial mound filled with a glittering word hoard at the beginnings of English literature.
Page(s) 16
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