Mathilde in Normandy

From the archaic ships the green and red
Invaders woven in their colored hosts
Descend to conquer. Here is the threaded headland,
The warp and woof of a tideless beach, the flight,
Recounted by slow shuttles, of swift arrows,
And the outlandish attitudes of death
In the stitched soldiery. That this should prove
More than the personal episode, more than all
The little lives sketched on the teeming loom
Was then withheld from you; self-conscious history

That writes deliberate footnotes to its action
Was not of your young epoch. For a pastime
The patient handiwork of long-sleeved ladies
Was esteemed proper when their lords abandoned
The fields and apple trees of Normandy
For harsher hunting on the opposite coast.
Yours was a time when women sat at home
To the pleasing minor airs of lute and hautbois,
While the bright sun on the expensive threads
Glowed in the long windless afternoons.

Say what you will, anxiety there too
Played havoc with the skein, and the knots came
When fingers’ occupation and mind’s attention
Grew too divergent, at the keen remembrance
Of wooden ships putting out from a long beach,
And the grey ocean dimming to a void,
And the sick strained farewells, too sharp for speech.