Gertrude and the Revenant

by Brett Rutherford

     A Heathen tale of the Danes
         made Christian, but just barely.

First and fairest — virgin maid —
in all the realms of Charlemagne,
to her from far and near the plea
came, Help us, saint and prophetess!

Godfather but newly dead, left
to Gertrude alone his towers.
Red the banners boldly blazoned,

but in time there came a count,
envious-eyed with armed minions
to spoil and waste the land about,

until the proud tower, prey
to malice and treason, fell.
By secret way and cavern, she

alone escaped their ravages.
Of all her silks and jewels, none
were left to her. One staff and book

was all she took upon her pilgrim
way, not to the Emperor, not
to some neighbor lord for succor,

but to the graveyard cold and drear,
where, striking her staff inside the tomb
and opening her book of elder lore,

she read a chapter to open the way,
another more for the summoning,
a third to name the awakened dead.

Loud she read, the wind her clamor,
the thunder her drum, the owl
her oboe shrill and quickening

until the dead man heard her song.
With moan as deep as mountain
echo, up rose the shaggèd head

of one she knew but all too well
(in horror she averted eye
from the rotted sockets' glare).

"Who dares with ancient lore
and cursed magic to summon me?"
the rotting thing now roared.

Upon her knees she fell, a-tremble.
"Refuse me not, 't is I, Gertrude,
god-daughter and heir, 't is I

"who kneeling implore your ghost,
for none alive can aid me.
To a count unknown to me

"the gates were thrown, the walls
fell undefended, tower to cellar
looted, the women ravished.

"The peasants groan, their corn,
not even a seed for planting,
has been carried off by one

"who honors neither law nor custom,
but takes whatever his arm
can seize. The monks are fled,

"the village bells are silent. Soon
snow will come, and all will starve.
Help me, god-father dear!"

And hearing this, the stone
above the corpse was pushed aside.
The walls of the vault exploded.

Stood he on his long legs strong,
flesh-rot returned to sinew,
godly grew his arms and shoulders.

Went they the maid and skeleton
back to the tower by line of sight,
trees sundered, tombs toppled,

streams forded whether or no
the waters favored, on they went,
until the towers' doors he rent.

The living courtiers crept away,
the traitorous followers fled,
even the bartered ill-used wives.

Gone they were like dew of dawn.
Only the Count stood firm.
He laughed at Gertrude and the shade.

"You, Revenant, I fear you not,"
he said, not putting down his cup.
"I am a warrior proven strong

"and you are only a skeleton.
Come forth and match me
hand for hand, and here I stand

"swordless and defy you.
This tower and all its fiefs
are mine now, stone to straw."

Slow he moved with dead man's gait,
dead heart pulsing in vacant
rib-cage, and then the skeleton

Was upon him, "One!" he said,
as bony hands gripped
the warrior's belt and tunic.

"For this tower is mine!"
Arms wrapped a waist
more fit for feast than fighting

and raised him a-high. A snap

and a cry, and his spine was twain.
"Two! For the scoured land!"

Thrust up again, the rag-doll

ruffian was seized at knees,
and both snapped as saplings

give way to the broad axe.

"Three! For thou hast offended
a woman not only of grace

and beauty, but witching ways!

Beware the woman with rod
and book, who keens the wind

"and raises the angry dead

to avenge her." That said,
the skeleton collapsed

and never more spoke, nor

walked of its own accord, nay,

not even a whisper uttered.

That eve, the bones took up
she into a burlap sack,
and Gertrude, shunning all,

carried her burden sore
to the sundered tomb, and laid
bone by bone into his bed

the beloved godfather,
then from a rose bloomed
out of season, she plucked

three petals, and knelt

and prayed to whatever
it was she believed in.

And the earth closed up,

and the tomb walls righted,
and the toppled cross

returned to its place
above the doorway.
She built a great church.

The grateful folk filed in
to see its gilded roof
and hear the chastened monks

sing Te Deum laudaumus,
over the silent bones.
Gertrude, silent, smiled.

Domitian's Black Room

by Brett Rutherford

Do you know who I am?
Do you know what this place is?
Bribe-takers, slave rapers, virgin-
abductors, temple defilers, daughter
seducers, wine adulterers, slum-
owning generators of a thousand
vices, some yet to be named!

I am Domitian, your Emperor!
Kneel and abase yourselves.
Your God! (I see that all
but three are on their knees.

Look how they grovel!) A hug,
Martius, and Gemellus, and Titus.
You smile and stand, you get
the joke. What is this place?

In the rest come now,
two by two through the black
corridor to greet me,
now that my “temple oracle”
voice has died away.

Marus, I see you have soiled your toga!
Go off to the side there and get another.
What, Senator, no mirthful greeting?
(Just watch as all the old men’s
remaining teeth light up
as they invent forced grins, watch next
as their hands lift up the folds of robes
to ease the coming bows and curtseys.)

Down to your knees, I see,
as if to beg pardon, no doubt for all
that I have agreed to know, yet overlook.
Up! Up! Was the way well-lit?
Did torches fail to reflect
the black hues of jet and onyx?
Did you perspire to near fainting
as you passed the grates
through which you viewed
my room of sharpened axes?

Ha! I heard some count aloud
how many steps they descended
as you came down to reach me.

Your protests were noted
when your own guards
were replaced by my Praetorians.
Spotting a soldier he knew,
our friend Vitruvius offered
his tender bottom if only they’d let
him go back to his villa
afterwards. He’ll join us soon,
once ten Praetorians
have had their way with him.

Whatever bribes you gave
from your purses, those rings
and armlets, I’ll pile them up
and find some better use
than the adornment of reprobates.

Not in your life have any of you
been this far below the ground.
There are things down here
that even the Etruscans dread.

Did you hear the hard rush
of the Tiber waters,
the groan of the Cloaca Maxima
as you passed below the rat-filled deep?

I heard one say the word “Avernus.”
Every word echoes down to me  —
everything! I heard one mumbled
Nazarene prayer, but not who uttered it.
Dream on of Hell and Hades:
I am down here awaiting you.
You are the first to come
to the Black Room of Domitian.
I will summon others after you!
There are lists! There are lists!

Stop that wailing and murmuring now!
Ring that gong over there!
Again! They hear us! They stir!
The iron doors groan open
(a nice effect, I must say,
and look at some of them, fainting!)

Eheu, what is this place? Look up,
you sniveling millionaires
and Senators. It is dinner!
Ha! Ha!    Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!

The Ravens Are Waiting, The Crows Have Arrived

by Brett Rutherford

1

Ravens are waiting. The crows have arrived.
Brown oaks darken with their spread wings, fanned tails.
Shrill calls from inside the chapel belfry
echo from the building fronts — a census
might count a thousand; how many make up
one "murder" is anyone's guess, but this,
at edge of college campus, counts as
a university already robed,
their corvine dissertations defended,
their gaudeamus anthems sunset-sung
as they spatter the bus-shelter's rooftops
and huddle all night in their unseen nests,
where they are nurturing tomorrow's crows
for their ancient calling. Ravens are waiting,
edged out, biding their time in ones and twos,
but they, too, are about their business,
hatching as many eggs as possible,
for they, afloat the white tide of Europe
onto this new continent, remember.

2

     Adapted from The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 937 CE

Here at Brunanburh, hosts
killed by King Athelstan,
lord of long-armed earls,
boon-giver of bracelets
to kneeling nobles,
killed he countless ones,
and with his brother also
Edmund, Elder, the aetheling —
how many killed? Too many
to count! Down the dead fell
as they destroyed the dread Scots
and burned their fair-sailed ships.
Loud the field resounded, bright
as gold the sweat on their armor!

Glad the sun rose, giving
light, the great star's morning
merry over the field of blood.
Dead soldiers lay, with lance
and dart struck down,
Norsemen prostrate
their brazen shields behind,
from arrows overshot.
Or Viking, or Scot,
or trait'rous Briton ally,
died they all dead
beneath the same bright sky!

Though some escaped,
Norsemen fleet in their nailed ships,
dragged off with our darts
inside them, sailed off
on the stormy sea
to fight a better day —
let them flee to Dublin,
sad city in Viking thrall!

But bellowing berserkers
they left behind.
Let them enjoy the crows,
and keening for their kind,
the dismal, starving kite
to entrail feast invite,
and let their last sight
be the black raven
with his horned beak
descending wide-winged.
And they, of armor stripped,
invite the white worm,
the voiceless toad,
the maggot-bearing fly.
By mid-day sun, the blood-
feast will draw the eagle,
and the greedy after-feast
of the falcon, battle-hawk.
At dusk, the gray beast comes.
Let but one live lamenting
the jaws of the wood-wolf.

Never in all the world's war
had there been a greater
slaughter, nor more destroyed
by the sharpened sword!

3

These are not bombs or arrows, yet.
Those who walk vertical are not yet
horizontal and motionless.
Not javelins, but hurled epithets,
anonymous death threats
are their weapons of choice.

Passive, unvaccinated idiots,
four to a pram, wheel to the park,
pushed by unlettered parents
whose only book celebrates
eyes plucked for eyes unopened.

The earth beneath them weeps,
the methane-pocketed soil shrugs,
Swiss-cheese sink-holed hollowed:
whose house will it swallow next?

The water, oil-slicked, rills bright
in rainbow glitterings, but no one
minds. The bees, too weak to pollinate
the trees, can only buzz protest.
The shrinking bird host
has no elected legislators.

The armies are everywhere.
More bullets in stock than ever
babies can be made. One with
your name on it awaits you!
Just one emergency more,
and troops tip-toe
across this border, that
river declared as mine
and not yours, the oil there
for the taking, loot's prime
directive! A subtle lead-up,
dueling conspiracies of complicit
foreigners, expert at poisoning
from village well to townhouse
door-knob, gas-death for all,
warehouses are ready, germs known
and unknown pocketed
for easy distribution. War-mongers
worse than war-hawks, with
mercenary wink, a profit
pocketed, the rich secured
in their walled manors —
oh, they are almost ready!

Led by a drooling madman,
and weasel sniveling, a nation rots.
No need for foreign enemies
when enemies of the people
are among us already. Take arms!
The National Guard will help.
Your local police are militarized
and know who the secret Muslims are!

Park and field, tent city
and commandeered stadium,
vast open spaces sky-spread
await the arrival of carrion.
The ground will groan
with the bodies of the dead.
Serves them right: journalists
the scum of Karl Marx, the host
of homeless what business theirs
to clog our cities, those bearded
zealots with their hairy Protocols,
off with you, o everything but white!

Athelstan's heirs, they cannot wait
for this. They were born to see
this thing through at last.
Sheets off, gentlemen, it's
Armageddon among us.

Ravens are waiting.
The crows have arrived.

The Developer

by Brett Rutherford

     After the 11^th-century Anglo-Saxon

Even before your birth
a home was built for you.
Your sculptured form was carved
to adorn its courtyard
even before your mother bore you.
We have planned for everything:
how many floors, how deep the lot
(these things are not determined
until I bring you to it.
Imagine not having to worry
about room enough for all
those honors and possessions!)

Here, in this vestibule remain
until I measure you
and the matching sod of earth.
The ceiling is too low, you say?
It is not highly built.
"Unhigh" or "low" are just two ways
to look at today's economies
of scale and space.
Too low to stand, I see,
too narrow for arm-swing.

I am here for you. See here:
the roof is built just up
to the breast's proud swell,
and no further. Horizontal?
A matter of perspective,
of marketing and branding.

In fact, we have already arrived.
I wanted to surprise you. Right here
you shall dwell full cold,
in dimness and darkness,
hearth-black, a cauldron cold
with, shall we say honestly,
an air of putrefaction.

Your new house needs no door
(a flat stone, a quaint barrow
of piled rocks for that pagan look),
nor is is lit within. Go in,
and feel yourself detained
in windowless darkness. Never
again will you need a house-key,
no phone, no lamp, no keeping out
your new neighbors, the creeping
and crawling things who just cannot
wait to make your acquaintance.
The worms come round
for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

You have no need of friends.
They will not come anyway,
not after the feasting, songs,
and fights over your belongings —
save for that one who digs,
opens the earth-top remembering
your strong arms, your kisses,
or, more likely, that golden finger-
ring they did not dare remove,

and seeing you at home this way,
he shall sicken and drop
the midnight shovel, for you
shall have become loathsome,
even to the sun and stars.

I take no fee for this.
Death am I, and I have done my due.