For what condemned?
Decay or death, unstable anchorage:
For you, none of these tragic fates,
reverend sentinel, park guardian,
merely a lopping of your limbs for safety.
Your anchor holds, has held dark ages, silent defender,
staunch against marauders,
mute warden through live nightmare passages:
the abbey windows shattered, saints defaced.
Your ligneous fathers saw it, silent inter strife,
sheltering soldiers crept from battle,
who'd sloughed all trappings of a civil life
their limbs by pike, sword, musket lopt,
their dying prayers whispering through your leaves.
Mortal and everlasting, one tree tells another
the dying murmurs:
Tell my wife
Morior victus
Jesus pity
Oh I am bleeding
Do not let me die
Susurrus scurries
backwards and roundwards, century-folded,
roundwards and backwards,
the trees wait for the repeat of the chorus:
Jesus I'm dying,
tell her I love her.
Woodsman, trim lightly
branches weighed with histories,
told tales and stuttered secrets.
It is your endless past they carry.