Member-only story
The Other Mound
an Anglo-Saxon mystery
They scraped
the grave ship to its ribs,
and plucked
the preserved fruits
from the warrior-king’s
side — fragments
of a sun god’s helmet,
eyes in eclipse,
a drinking horn’s
embellished lip,
shoulder clasps of garnet
interlaced with gold,
a sword blade
broken into shards,
an enamelled purse
tooled to perfection,
the accoutrements of dust,
tagged by scholars
and placed behind glass.
I bought the black and white
postcards for less than sixpence
from Valhalla’s anteroom,
distracted by the hooves
and wings of Ninevah,
and soon forgot
all about the bally-hoo,
until half a century later,
when, while pottering around,
I stumbled across the mythos
of the other mound,
a mere sleepwalk away from
the silk route of the imagination,
where traces of a high-ranking woman,
her purpose a mystery,
lay buried on the diagonal.
