Churl stamps through the swamp.
Wet scowl, muddy shins, leather
sandals chafing. Bile. He eyes the shaggy
blacksmith’s wife but she will not,
will not have him. So he stomps back
to the kine, who are kin, lowering
at him in the rain where grumble is
how they hold together happily,
humping and forgetting.
Churl remembers every
curse and kick that sent him
on his way to this outskirts hut
where even his damp fire
wants to smoke him out.
He nurses it, and in his breast
a charred ember grows arms
and legs and fingers that reach
for a length of rope then
tie the knot of reason
to twist it round the nearest throat.
Face it, Churl, the world’s
too big for you. Your piecemeal picture
leaves out most of it without a hint
there’s something missing.
Books could be bound
and shelved on the moon
for all you’ll ever get to know
of them. The velvet-antlered life
of courtiers and kings likewise
plays out on other planets.
This corner, though —
grey light on the thatch,
scruffy ponies tender-lipping
thin spring grass, the rope
and hammer and the swing
of a rough skirt as it passes with
a clutch of flax — is your store
of wisdom. What’s known so well
time will dismiss, but you’ve
passed that test already:
your bones will some day learn
the lick of earth’s tongue here
you’ll be the painless master of
a fertile grammar.
Churl barely owns a coat, much less
a coat of arms, but let’s be generous
and pretend: make him king for a day
of all the animal world and ask
which beast is his emblem?
Not the beautiful: otter, peregrine
or lynx. Not the warrior caste:
the devils and tigers of distant islands
outclass him. Nor the plated aardvark
or rhinoceros — too impervious
and, in any case, their tragic
date with history comes later.
Not cool as an eel, nor brittle-shiny
as a beetle. Not one of the flock nor
owning, in his onliness, the splendour
of the albatross. What then, what?
More apt might be the camel
but hold on, best stay real now: haul
your flimmering kites of fancy back
to village dirt and just say
donkey: stubborn-shanked,
morose and bony.
Each passing horse looks
down his nose but Churl
outlasts — endures, resists —
30the sticks that thresh his hide
until the fleas jump from
the strakes of his ribs,
puts head down
and walks on.
When they came through on hooves
and horseflesh looking for a fight
they knocked him over like a chair,
back-flattened, legs in air. And
like a wooden chair, he couldn’t
right himself. Already they’d galloped on,
having hardly seen him. From
that day Churl was always (after someone
running stopped to set him on his feet
then sped to check the children)
just a little wrong, crooked inside
himself, as if the topsy-turvy had dislodged
a part that didn’t matter much at first
but slowly became sore point, weak point,
point where all his leverage leaked
into the earth, everything vice versa.
It was a day for the black bile.
Everything tasted metal.
Fire wouldn’t catch.
Rain wouldn’t go.
A day to huddle
in the hut’s near dark
counting grudges
counting crows.
Rats rustled
in the thatch
of his thoughts.
Nothing for it but the flask
to light the ache and make it
glow.
But today they want him for a game
of soldiers. He takes the iron carapace
for makeshift home, and shield
and spear outline his ordinary
soul so the world can see and be
afear’d. Gruff and surly still,
a skittle swelled with purpose,
for once he has a place
in someone else’s plan.
It comforts him.
He keeps a fragile peace.
Stop yer lookin, she says
as she sweeps by with a bundle
of bony-fingered sticks for a besom.
Ye’ve no got the pockets
and besides he’d break yer silly head.
Churl knows it’s true but can’t
blink out her hipsway,
her everyday trudge past his hovel
to water, to market, for faggots.
At night when a moony finger
pries through the straw to touch
him where it hurts, he opens
one eye. Stop yer lookin
he mutters to her callous cousin
the lidless watcher in the sky.
Black pudding
Black pot
Black cherry
Black rot
Black rust
Black looks
Black list
Black books
Black ice
Black salt
Blackthorn
Black wort
Black art
Black oats
Black scab
Black soap
Black sheep
Black rat
Black cattle
Black cat
Black bile
Black mark
Blackmail
Black work
36Black magic
Black jack
Black joke
Bone black
Black medick
Black clock
Black monk
Black watch
Black vomit
Black breath
Black-souled
Black death
Black-plumed
Black-clad
Black earth
Pitch black
Of a frosty night he dreams
a white bear with black tongue
and black eyes walking
alone between ice-glitter and star-glimmer
following a black nose
to haul sealflesh from the sea
and find a white-furred female.
The black claws scritch the crystals.
The bear will not be turned
from his yearly purpose.
Churl’s never been that far
north, still it’s a memory or message,
though, this dream, no mere
aurora in his head. He knows it
in his bones and blood. Wakes
underneath the skins to snowlight
turns over while the dream retreats
on black-padded feet to the hissing
of blades on a sled.
Chewing. Crunching. Gnawing.
Spitting. Belching. Sitting
as the fire burns down he thinks
of the birds in the fields
not yet become a meal
for ham-fisted gods like him.
The pheasant with his barred
tail and choke-note.
Finches flocking red-gold out
of the wheat when pots are beaten,
and how the cast
net of them whirls and drops
over the tree
where they resettle on alert
for the moment when the little gods
of the crops are eyeing other enemies. And once,
the weird, slicing hum of a swan-pair
rowing air above the river-road
towards the grand estate where none
but royalty will have them
on its plate. He stuck a dropped
pinion in his thatch that day.
The silken-hooked white flame
still burning from the hollow shaft
catches his eye on nights when,
belly full, the mind is free to wander.
He wouldn’t eat that, though it writes
his hunger.
The only horse he owns and rides
is chalk-white on the green hill.
Is a constellation, a wheel
and snort of stars
earth-stabled in daytime
turned loose at night
after the moon stops
watching. Churl crouches
low against the winds
and grips a fist of mane
but knows that nothing will
unseat him. He comes
from a long line
of starblazers, horsemakers.
Against all earthly proof
he holds it to be true.
The few who look close
get a glimpse of it
in the roll and glitter
of his eye.
When Churl was born he slipped out
like a foal in a cloudy caul.
A few rough licks from his mother’s
tongue, then she told him
to get on with it, died not long after
in breach of a brother.
The way it’s been ever since,
early calluses getting harder.
There he is, cleaning his ear out
with his finger, wiping grease
on his breeks, tossing the bones.
He knows what’s said against him
but stocks up against coming
hunger, sucking on stones.
Some nights he goes across the field
to stand like a battered tankard on
a hillock. Overlooks the wheat, the
woods, the waning sun. Knows,
for a moment, that none of this is his and
all is. That’s beyond the ken
of some who think they run the world.
Nights like those, he’ll settle with the sun.
If he were a hero, something
would happen now. Instead, he lives
a long unhappening. Unadventure,
unbirthdays, unrest. But Churl has
his admirers: the reeds and
finches flutter at his passing,
small children now and then
mistake his shaggy coat
for comfort and lean close, grabbing
a fistful of unintended warmth
nonetheless freely given and
with unexpected feeling.
Still he looks to the glittering
bear in the sky, the horse
on the hill. They eye him back
out of black, out of green.
At night he tells himself
their stories, rides them
far into the world before they turn
and bring him breathless home.
He can wait for the night when
they just keep going
over the edge of the world
taking him far and forever beyond
what the blacksmiths and
elders, the midwives and
farmers know: it will be cold
out there, but he’ll be glad
to go.
One night
out trapping
light up ahead —
small fire in the night-
woods, small figure hunched,
face hooded from the flame.
He creeps close
enough to see the skinny wrists
and know that he could overpower
this. He steps out
of the trees, cudgel-ready
and up she jumps
like a frightened jill
whose foot has felt the whisper
of the closing snare
but her hand holds
a knife, she stands
her ground.
Can’t cudgel this,
so has to talk it round —
but she won’t gentle so he
grabs at her wrists, gets
boxed for his trouble
feels the sting
of her blade then
cuffs and curses
drags an arm up her back
to settle it, takes a cord
from his belt to truss her.
Illicit game is what
he came for, but what
will he do with this
struggling creature,
still alive, and good
for neither food nor trade?
He sucks the cut
47on his forearm, retires
to the other side of
the campfire to eye her
and consider.
She eyes him back.
His bird in her hand.
So he does what
she came for — spits
the bird, and when it’s done
untrusses her
hands over a half-share.
Straight after
she is flicker and
snuffed quickly by the dark
but he hears her rabbit-running
by the snap of twigs
and branches in her path
mind-eyes a white scut bobbing
until she’s far enough for breath,
unsheltered safety.
After, he’s always on the lookout.
A small beacon burns,
disturbs his rest.
Unfair. Nettled
by the fine hair on
her forearms.
And then one day
she’s there —
in daylight, swinging
her catch in one hand
the other pushing back
a strand from her eyes,
pale blue, he now sees,
colour of glacier country
of a line that came
on the longships.
Must have been watching.
Strange to think of himself
as what she’s seen
with that thousand-mile stare
up close enough to judge
the tilt of his neck
the swing of his axe.
He’s game. Now lifts his head
to her scent on the breeze.
There’ll be no song
for it — too soon for troubadours
and anyway in another country.
No vault to exalt the voice,
no scruffy bard to sing
what Churl, an ordinary pawn,
cannot. He’s outside poetry
at this time, it’s true, but
he knows a spell or two
and at a pinch could find
a ribbon to riddle her hair on
that rare day when she
is of a mind to care about
beguilement. He’ll leave it at
her door and let her guess
who brought it and what it was
he came for. (Whistling.)
A blackbird lives in the hedge.
A monster lives in the fen.
The poor forked creature
walks
and sometimes rides
the white horse up the hill
and down again.