Ogre - Richard Dawson

In the kingdom of Bryneich

Verging on a muddy crook of Coquet

A dice of houses cast with clay and sheepdung

Through a soup of starlit peatsmoke

Gradually emerges as we descend

«Bring the goose my child!»

I carve a notch into the squirming post

It smells like a smithy

«Hurry now and drink the bowl before it congeals»

There comes frightful news from town

Of great evil abound

The heartbroken potter’s idiot boy was snatched from the speltfield

Scouring a fortnight in the hills

All they found, pointing from a sett, a small grey hand

«Tie the goats to my cot

With tansy rags their faces cover

Push straws into the windows

Damp the coals, and bar the door with hornbeam limb»

Blinding colours leap

Along bemirrored tower walls

Stretching as far as the eye can see

I am woke in icy beads

By a clamour coming from the broadbeans

The snapping of stems and a foul-smelling bloom

Paralysed I watch my child’s breath

Glide like a jellyfish across the black morning

(When the sun is climbing)

We’ll find the harrow smothered in slime

(When the sun is climbing)

We’ll put it in the dog’s noses

(When the sun is climbing)

We’ll break upon the heath

(When the sun is climbing)

We’ll dash across the Ringing Meadow

(When the sun is climbing)

We’ll weather a storm of living needles

(When the sun is climbing)

We’ll tarry by the Pool of Plenty

(When the sun is climbing)

We’ll hurry down the Valley of Eagles

(When the sun is climbing)

We’ll hear the distance of the North Sea

(When the sun is dying)

We’ll cross the Causeway of No Memory

(When the sun is dying)

Our trees will billow into dunes

(When the sun is dying)

We’ll wade around the shoreline

(When the sun is dying)

The algae as a nap of fire

(When the sun is dying)

Below the surface of the water

(When the sun is dying)

In the face of the cliff a ghastly doorway

(When the sun is dying)

We’ll pitch a tent of pigskin on the beach

(When the sun is dying)

The ebbing tide will soon reveal its secrets