POEMS
o
FLODDEN FIELD
*
to the memory of Edwin Muir
The learned King fought
like a fool, flanked
and out-tricked, who hacked
in a comer of cousins
until the ten thousand
swords lay broken,
and the women walked
in their houses alone.
On
a journey among horses,
the spirit of a man who died
only a week ago
is
walking through heather
and forgets that its body
had seventy years.
The wild horses are singing,
and the voices of the rocks.
The spirit from the bone-yard
finds a new life, in the field
where the King's wound
built the blackness of Glasgow
and the smoke of the air.
The spirit, like a boy,
picks up from the heather
a whole sword.
Donald Hall
• Note: The Battle of Flodden took place in September 8, 1408;
King James I of Scotland, whose court was among the most
learned in Europe and included Dunbar and Douglas, lost his
entire army and his own life. The result of the battle was
English dominance and the perpetual poverty of Scotland; at
the site of the battle is a stone on which the Scots have written
only,
"0
Flodden Field."
