BARROW'S MOUTH
From the gore-blackened mound Gúthcwen returned,
the putrid reek of the ravenous wight
still deep in her lungs. Day had sundered
the turbid shroud of shadowed gloom
that hides the face of heaven’s jewel;
Gúthcwen the Strong had gained victory
and as weregild, Walhréow, wave-patterned sword,
raven-feeder famed in Wilderland,
a princely toll taken for the corpses
her undead foe had feasted upon:
her father’s skull was scraped for his brains,
his bones opened to better taste
the marrow within—the massacred
festered in a midden, the foul remnants
of gnawed warriors. Winding homeward,
the death-vapors were deep in her nails
for her father's sword had failed her—burst—
and only hand-prowess and powerful limbs
could snap the bones of the barrow-wight
and that corpse destroy. Steadfast her spirit
to bear forward against bitter odds
unknowing her doom—had she knowledge then
of cutting down with curse-blackened sword
her thief husband, the hatred and feud
that eft ensued, secret murders
and kinslaying, would it have cowed her heart
into returning to the lair of the terrible wight
and burying herself in the bloodied earth?
Or would she march onward, unmoved by the doubt
harrowing her descendants in hopeless days?
