Kingdom Of Elmet

A starveling land.
Dead mills grinning
from empty skulls.
A tilted churchyard, girdling
black tombs of millstone grit,
casting blue shadows of remembrance
over soiled snow.
In the canal below
now stilled with ice,
a broken boat, boots, bottles,
debris that water might redeem,
congealed like unrepented sin.
Even in summer
grass more bilious than green:
sheep spread thin.
Enduring farms
set at odd angles
on some unrewarding slope:
hawthorns, lace curtains in a slum
covering nakedness with hope.

Yet once, by choice, or driven,
a beleagered band of Celts
desperately defended
this unprofitable sod for half a century,
then sank, all but forgotten
under the Saxon flood.