World's End, South Africa
"Who’s a-feär’d?"
—Thomas Hardy’s motto for the Society of Dorset Men
Here now is chaos once again,
Primeval mud, cold stones and rain.
Here flesh decays and blood drips red,
And the Cow’s dead, the old Cow’s dead.
—Robert Graves, “Dead Cow Farm” (1918)
I know a thing I ought not put in verse
But should descend with me into the earth,
For I’m half Saxon—quarter Dorset man,
Another quarter from old Saxony.
Like my model master, Thomas Hardy,
I harbor notions that ought not be read.
The old Saxons favored inhumation—
Up in Anglia, tribals burned their dead.
From around Wimborne, George Bailey ferried
Past Meadow Stream, now the river Allen,
In February, or Sprout Kale—Cake Month,*
At length to Africa. There, grandchildren
Mingled their seed with that of many tribes,
And, there born, by right there, too, were buried.
♮♮♮
Drough day sheen for how many years
The geäte ha’ now a-swung
Behind the veet o’ vull-grown men
And vootsteps of the young,
Drough years o’ days it swung to us
Behind each little shoe,
As we tripped lightly on avore
The geäte a-vallèn to.
—William Barnes, “The gate a-fallen to”†
*The Anglo-Saxons called February “Cake Month,” inasmuch as cakes were offered to the gods then, or “Sprout Kale,” since their cabbages sprouted in that month.
†“The gate a-fallen to,” or shut—which is to say, death—was the last poem of the Dorset dialect poet and philologist William Barnes (1801–86).
Wednesday, February 12, 2025
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