Without, the sleet, the bitterness of winter.
Bald-tree uplands. Light weeps splinters
on the rocky leas. But underneath the roof
the Great Hall smokes. The warm crowd mingles
jeer with guffaw, lifts cups, quaffs.
Life like a sparrow, darts in through the door
above the fatted board, below the angled,
bon-fire-burnished beams. The brief warm
flutters from end to end, then once more
blown into the bleak unguessed, forlorn.
Forgotten before it leaves. Before it has even come,
forgotten. That's what Coifi told Edwin of Northumbria.