FIVE
MORE SIDES TO THE FRANKS CASKET
Legend
The beached King of Terror
Yielded his cage of bones
For this ark of dark scrimshaw,
But know too in your own,
Warned by Our Lady's Prophet,
He'll come back with attitude
To land the world in his net
Of longitude and latitude.
Fastitocalon's
Congregation
More island than beast, sailors call
This creature Fastitocalon the Whale.
If hungry he need but yawn to lace
A sea for miles with scented trails:
Shining schools drawn to their source
Soon pack Fastitocalon's enormous maw
Like a cinema, until his huge jaw rises,
A cruel curtain, and the lights go down.
Revision
Up the whale-road to the coast of the Danes
Sailed Irv, kin of Ing. Leder his hosen,
His armband scarlet, its centre crossed runes
For rebirth and oxen. He barked in their burg
'Hark to me Vikings! Heed me blood brothers!
In Vinland they're filming slights on your past,
On gentle St Grendel, the Lamp of the Baltic -
Nor will you credit their take on his mother!'
The Abbess'
Treasure
I don't buy your strings of Latin wisdom -
Tacitus thought all English pearls the colour
Of navel fluff, yet Bede lists green, violet,
Byzantine silk purple, martyr-seed red...
I prize these goitres you're so keen to cure -
Tomorrow I fix budgets with the pig bishop;
Watch their effect on him. Today list those books
You've leeched on at me for weeks to order.
Casket Base
Alfred's world's an egg-yolk, Bede's a child's ball:
When we made this casket we thought like that,
Mad, animated likening caught all.
And when we pass you'll learn the world is flat.
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