by Patricia Beer
Frost and new year pitched a white morning round him.
Swinging from the castle in a chime of sleet
His hooves pealed down the silver valley
Where girls with skirts in spate and foaming aprons
Fed geese into the wind, and waterfalls
Flounced down from pool to stone.
All that sharp year since his green enemy
Fastened on the fields and sucked them pale
His throat ached under the seasons like a vault,
The strong moth fidgeted in his eyelids. For a year
The wine ran through his cup like sand
And the boar's head mutilated his dreams.
His doom was each day's date, a bright
Malignant freckle on faint parchment.
And now he rode in the new year, where trees ran
With steady antlers beside the storm. The bridge
Lunged over the river into the green chapel.
But the ignis fatuus of a happy ending thawed
The icicle that kept his heart together,
The marrow of despair hissed out of his bones.
World and the winter cracked and free the grass
Jousted once more in the plains of the west country
As in the bright unravelling of spring
His banner bloomed again in Arthur's court.
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