Dream Poem 103: The Knives

A Bronze Age village near the sea
Round low houses with high pitched thatch.

Inside peaty smoke, prismatic blacks
Long shadows.

Red light from the fire pit rising up
blue light from the sky, slanting down
in a shaft through the smoke hole.

A curdling of smouldering curls
make paisley patterns of the air.

I am the chief’s daughter eleven years old.
This is my house
All my relatives and family live here together.

Vikings from over the sea live in the next village.
They come and steal from us.

I have two knives,
One is a special dagger,
the other one is an everyday blade.

I must hide them so they are not taken from us.
I am small and insignificant
wrapping the knives in a skin I push it into my clothes and hide.

The Vikings come
shove around my brothers
scare my mother.
Make nuisances of themselves
fall down drunk in a tent next to where I’m hiding.

I wriggle out and manage to find another hiding place for the knives
before they wake up.

This is lucky because when they awake they do find me
search me, find nothing and leave.

Later I retrieve the daggers and give them to my Father and brothers.
They must not be lost or taken.
This blade is ceremonial, religious,
a talisman, an object of magic.
It is green bronze
cast with figurines and patterns.
A short edge but important.




images: St Andrew's Horde
Late Bronze age c.800-600 B.C. Late Bronze age, bronze socketed knife / dagger found in West Yorkshire
wiki commons - post card of Skara Brae, Orkney, turn of the century.


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