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Orm Gamalson
Fast the feather lay
Like a sulky jewel in my head
Till I knew it had fallen in a holy place:
Therefore I raised these grey stones up again
- Herbert Read, Kirkdale
Or rather, did some distant English priest,
beardless and pallid,
shadowed by his cowl,
resenting your ruddy skin and your wild pale hair,
make you feel foreign in old Gamal's farm -
though begotten in Yorkshire, born as well as he
and bred among these English moors and dales?
And did he, this tonsured priest - turned sour maybe
by Advent fasting
or the living's dearth,
resenting your belly and your well-fleshed haunch -
pin guilt on you for your lands and for your wealth
usurped and plundered by some far-back viking kin -
albeit yours by lawful inheritance?
Did he insinuate that there were ways
to gain a place above
reach of reproach?
And did you at last sell out, Orm Gamalson?
Or rather, thinking in market terms, buy in -
into the stock of the righteous company,
into a share in the English hierarchy?
Only a churl would dare reproach you now.
Your Minster rose - still stands -
beside Hodge Beck.
And proud enough of your fine Norse name you were
to inscribe it there with Gregory's and with Christ's ...
And Edward's, the dubious confessor-king,
And Tosti's, the lawless and shortly-outlawed earl.
Copyright S. A. J. Bradley 2001
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