William Ayot

Honouring the Ancient Dead

I was here with the wind and the weather
when life was still rooted in soil and stone.
What I knew was bounded by forest and fen.
I made war, and sacrifice, and then a home.

You look at me now through a wall of glass
that is really no more than an autumn mist.
My fears are all yours, as were my dreams.
My gods were as dear to me as your own.

What you see may seem like an empty husk,
a dry, de-natured, and disconnected thing,
but I am your link to your own beginnings.
Your ancestors too once lay under the hill.

There’s a song that sings us all back together.
To hear it in these bones is to belong.

William Ayot