Thursday 10 March 2016

from Blackwater Quartet, selection 73



The Last Valkyrie

On a houseboat in winter, on a day
without tomorrows she remembers how it began,
with the others, something elemental.

Gods write no memoirs,
exhibiting temperament, the way systems rollick,
or expand, or fail— after the bleating and the blood
a last thought, buffed charm never bettered or broken,
to be found with the pottery
a thousand years from this disappointment.

She knows how it is, humans
looking for pity and assistance.

She recalls a cold morning, the hero’s face
as she beckoned him forward,
his blackened armour, and the way his body fat
spat as it burnt.

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