Flodden: Dialogue Of The Dead Poem by Sheena Blackhall

Can you hear the dialogue of the dead?

Tell us the cause was worth it. Tell us you’ll not forget
We are the dead, we only live as long as memory lasts
Here in the quern and crush of reductive time'

Great War lords fell like leaves,
Into the marsh, its clammy, slug-cold burn
Their sinuous, glory banners kissed the mud

The dying breath of a defeated army
Gave up its ghosts to hang in the dreich air

A forest of ancient families
Uprooted like oaks in storm, had perished utterly
This battle sucked the smeddum from a nation

After the hot rage of war, the salt tears of grief
Death entered Scotland’s gardens, plucked its roses
The field of Flodden fed on Scottish blood

Thistles, sliced asunder by the ploughshare
Driven into the sodden, clinging bog,
The bleak, scabbed earth,

Here is a corpse’s opened, leprous cheek,
Crow-pecked like carrion, near a burnished shield
There, a gralloched page boy moves with maggots
A lover’s gentling hand welds to a sword

Armour and clothing, flit like will o’ the wisps
Rich pickings for the après battle looters
Horses and masters mingle in corruption

Tell us the cause was worth it. Tell us you’ll not forget
We are the dead, we only live as long as memory lasts
Here in the quern and crush of reductive time