Excerpt from Skald - Sword & Sea-Cloud

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Skald

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Skald

Sword & Sea-Cloud
Ian Crockatt

2020
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Published by Arc Publications,
Nanholme Mill, Shaw Wood Road

Todmorden OL14 6DA, UK
www.arcpublications.co.uk

Copyright in the poems © Ian Crockatt, 2020
Copyright in the illustrations © Wenna Crockatt, 2020
Copyright in the present edition © Arc Publications, 2020

978 1908376 80 0

Design by Tony Ward
Cover illustration by Wenna Crockatt
Printed in the UK by Ashford, Gosport, Hants

In memory of
my twin sister Gill

Acknowledgements
The complete text of SKALD was originally published
in Poetry Scotland issues 43 & 46. It was first published
in chapbook form in 2009 by Koo Press, and reprinted
by them in 2011. ‘Viking Spring’ was also published

in the anthology New Writing Scotland 25

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to provision of relevant collective licensing
agreements, no reproduction of any part
of this book may take place without the written
permission of Arc Publications.

Arc Pamphlet Series
Series Editor: Tony Ward

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Contents

Part I – Widow

Viking Spring / 9
Language / 10
Cuil Sound / 11
His Ring / 12
At Best / 13
Cuil Cliffs / 14

The Unprotected / 15
Drowning / 16
Plea / 17
Swans / 18
Widow / 19
Rainbow / 20
Enquirer / 22
Ghosts / 23

Part II – Raiders

Toasts / 27
Waiting / 28
Aftermath / 29
Love, Scars / 30
Horizons / 31

Ice / 32
Chimeras / 33

War / 34
Land / 36
Landlocked / 37
Harvest / 38

Afterword / 39

Biographical Note / 40

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I
Widow

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Viking spring

This: barley green as grass
swaying in gusty May;

its clouds of brandished blades.
This: ghost-blurs from the coast,

hoar-brained crows cawing, haar
fingering the halting

hearts and limbs of lambs
willed to life on the hill.

And this: wing-whirr of geese,
wind-arrows in narrow

formation confirming
sea-currents still foment

their baleful heat, hot blood
and gold-greed still breed in

the mind; sea-wolves still found
fine steel in hearts: yours; mine.

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Language

Language, teased from his tongue,
snared, tangled as his hair,

invades her inner ear.
Finding it floods her mind

with oath, sinew, saga
she rejects it, objects,

claims testosterone-tossed
words do this: turns, kisses

him – so softly, so calm
in her certainty, her

intimate mouth-lore, that
his brushed lips let hers slip

moth-winged by. What cloud-flung
thousand-watt bolt so jolts

the mind, sends such insect-
fine tremors down our spines?

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