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From
Boudicca & Co., 2006
Salt Publishing,
ISBN: 1-844712-89-3
Driving the Tribes (an
extract from Boudicca)
We
were like a river of mad ants,
unkempt
and straggling, huddled
in
factions, here one tribe,
there
another, not one man on that side
calling
this one brother. More men
poured
like water
into
this flesh-coloured river
at
every town, suspicious
of
motive, belief, allegiance, honour,
yet
still fighting for each other.
For
days we ploughed a crooked swathe
through
the old valleys,
left
them dark, like war-paint on dead bodies,
coming
upon settlements
smokeless
and empty, their folk already gone—
the
way you know a storm’s coming,
the
scent of it on the wind
and
those short hairs
on
the back of your neck, stiffening.
The
chariots, so many chariots, thick dust
clouding
the air for hours afterwards,
oak
leaves tacky with it, water
greased
with it, children
playing
in the ruts, women running out
with
cloths clamped over their mouths,
skirts
raised, to stare at us ...
Eighty
thousand Britons
rending
a road where there was none,
working
a war-path
from
field and cow-shit and bracken.
Jane Holland
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