Dark Into Light

Loose Leaves – Art Inspired

 

This long poem completes a sort of “Saxon triptych” (see, Leaf 113 & Leaf 156). It was originally written and posted on Bluesky in response to a #SenseWrds writing prompt to compose a poem inspired by (but not using) the words: ‘Mosaic, Frost, Enchanting.’ Reflecting on these words, I soon found myself thinking of an old Anglo-Saxon poem fragment which, as an archaeologist, has always been one of my favourites. Reading ‘The Ruin,’ it is almost as if the Saxon poet can foresee the future archaeologists coming in search of the past with their trowels, much in the same manner in which the poet explores the old Roman ruins (possibly Aquae Sulis, or present day Bath), the abandoned remnants of several hundred years of imperial occupation, which had long been and gone before she or he decided to write about it. Much in the same manner then, I have attempted to write a similar, alliterative poem using an old, Saxon-inflected voice to give a modern archaeologist’s eye view as to what the so-called “Dark Ages” might actually have been like in reality. Not so much a fall from civilisation, but rather a redefining of a distinct cultural identity; an identity which was in fact deeply rooted in the past, and one which still informs the present day too.

 

Victor Ambrus - Saxon Canterbury

 

BRITANNIA’S END

After an old Anglo-Saxon poem fragment, ‘The Ruin.’*

 

Following the well-cobbled roads

their conquering fore-fathers laid,

the last Legionaries left.

 

Returned to Rome,

slowly their white-rimed ruins

receded into a ghostly realm.

 

Four hundred Imperial summer’s yielded,

and white-winter enfolding the land;

oak, ash and elder, awaiting a new era.

 

The old stones, wyrd broken;

the mysterious work of giants

spoken only of, in mythic tones.

 

Snow-shrouded, whited out,

colourful pavement tiles and

gaudy painted plaster walls.

 

Landed parchments scraped clean,

deed-scripts drawn upon age-faded

palimpsests; bounds still echoing ages afore.

 

So, whited-winter brought, a welcome return

to brown wood and earth; the hearth-warm

hubbub of the meadhall’s gilded ease.

 

White-misted breath, hailing

the bard’s word-hoarded tales of old;

eyes glinting, goldbright, and mood-glad.

 

So slept the land, ready to wake;

awaiting the rejuvenating warmth

of ground-greening Spring:

 

Bringing a new dawn,

and a new idea of all

that Albion might be.

 

 

Silver penny minted during the reign of Alfred the Great, struck 875–880 AD

 

*See, 'The Ruin', translated by Michael Alexander, The Earliest English Poems (Penguin, 1977)

Photograph Credits: Gernot Keller/Wikipedia / Victor Ambrus/HistoryFiles / Classical Numismatic Group/Wikipedia