“So it is goodbye to all you know and love

on your home ground, the open-handedness,

the giving of war swords. Every one of you

with freeholds of land, our whole nation,

will be dispossessed, once-princes from beyond

get tidings of how you turned and fled

and disgraced yourselves. A warrior will sooner

die than live a life of shame.”

Rest. Action. Movement and repose.
Running away and staying to fight.
Feeling the pain and loss, mixed with the joy and release
of blood letting. Of letting go, of crying.
The freedom of the vagabond, of the manumitted slave.
To sleep next to the whale-path, under the star-way.
To belong everywhere, and accepted nowhere.
To be known, to be unloved.
Up to the forest-covered, up to the water-holders.
To sit at the top and be romanced by earth’s lover,
Feel the hurt as she turns her face from you,
and the joy of her return.
Sadness and Joy, light and dark.
Rest. Action. Movement and repose.