The Battle of Hastings October 1066

These words worked the long day Harold died,
when Norman French swept up the slope of Senlac Hill

and English grammar broke and bled into the dusk.

Harold’s rotted in his unmarked grave,

but the tattered remnants of his word hoard

have colonised the globe. Linguistic vertigo:

fall and find yourself, there in the shield wall,

beating battle-axe on war-board, chanting

“Out! Out! Out!” as the chain-mailed tide,

grey as the Channel, flows up the hill.

From 'Lady Godiva and Me.'