Читать книгу Sanctuary - Martyn Halsall - Страница 15

Runes

Following a flashlight, hoovering through the dark,

he found runes; twiggery, a woven stick fence,

predominantly verticals, and the odd curve

like a glance of sky between twin tower blocks,

a signed boast of sparse literacy at that time:

Dolfin wrote these runes on this stone.

Questions follow, as always when a light’s switched off,

when anyone goes down from a high discovery:

Why did this man see need to sign the cathedral?

Why do the strokes grow longer with each rune?

Did confidence master suspicion of discovery?

Why the imperative to leave a name?

And why did the later schoolboys who made their marks

at choir practice need to bring their knives?

Thomas Pattinson, living at the sign of The Bush,

Robert Horsley, probably a butcher’s boy.

Clues scribbled on scraps from eighteenth-century text books,

exercises, drawings, class-lists, found

in a fireplace unblocked two centuries later

continued that quiet ministry of cleaning, and disclosure.