KATHLEEN JONES

`TO THE GODS THE SHADES'

Inscription on a 1st century Roman tombstone in Hexham.

The wolf and wild boar wintered here
where Flavinus' impetuous latin blood
felt the unkindness of snow

and the granite hardness of the Wall
whose builders he defended against
the brutal insurgence of Pict and Celt.

Days of cracked leather, blistered hands,
the horses' breath rising like bath-house steam,
a northern mist obscuring the sun's retina;

remembering the soft, olive-perfumed
flesh of southern lovers in the rough,
hessian coupling of Celtic women —

the wire-boned, woad-stained, spoils of war,
who worshipped alien Gods and stank
of semen and ambiguous politics.

Flavinus, Standard-Bearer to the Troop —
speared by the carved barbarian
trampled under his horse — killed

by the cold driven in on the east wind
scouring the Tyne gap through this bleak
border town where everything closes at five -

his final dread — to leave his bones
to winter north in the sour peat, covered
by the same grey stone he died for.


© Kathleen Jones
Lancaster Lit Fest Anthology