Prudence Primrose

詩集Poems

Weal

13 August 2025

nae body kens hwat thou wat1,a goed en or a bad,yet beating hearts ken,n auld eens wot.

so, hwat shal be forever marrow?mony a mon be here,yet still soothed skiesand blinkin stars,amangst the bustle,true kam worldlie delighte,yet nae alane kenthy bouer’s bryht.

hwer, o hwer,be the auld tides gane?far from the tideof the lambkin’s bide.

for ther be ayes,and there be nays,yet true hearts may delightein thy sade een.

yet ygh wot it all,yet oft nae be soothed.whatever so it sall be,ygh ken now this sooth.2

may mony a dayygh cry, ken this true,for nae mon kens better than thou.ygh cry,ygh ask for why,yet never a sigh.

ygh ken hwy,but ygh still nae ken.oft ygh wotfor these een nae more to cry,banes gang cald,n breath no tides more.

soothe mine hart, God,and enthrall me nae mair.

so ygh prattle on forthlike wee birdies of spring.hwat ye can do,ygh wot that nae not.

sights of black,temptations of sin,what greater demandthan a testament’s end?

yet outside’s pullalways cometh again.ygh ken:one day it will happen again.ygh pray it notall be for naught.

ygh say it all,n ygh wot it quite keen,yet behinder it all,mine hart be unweened.

ygh scream,n ygh cry,nae worry about.

so tae grass on meself,let me sing it quite clear:oft ygh dear yearnfor the reaper’s weal.3

ygh wot,n ygh ken,yet for true,ygh nae hwyi so muck abaut.

nae mon kens when fair tides come be,nor eny mon ken hwen nighr mares run free4.sit wallow and bear, ’tis the thing to be done,i think on this wave, what a peculier sum.

spokes break, new fastenings come though,in the center of the wheel5of the true weal in you.

take girdle, take whip, for thy will be command,yet fair hearts know true,that there’s better than hope:to see and let go,to love yet not cry.these things i seeare no taller than i.

when things grow dim,fate be undone.come take my hand,let us go for a run.a new spin, just one,oh, i say it in jest,one, but not oneforever the rest.

wicked visage come many,and i feel its great hoofpumm’ling downthrough my bare trodden roof.yet build it again, i suppose, in my strides,i know better;than to fight with the tides.

perhaps it comes next,or any great morn,should it find me at breath,i know not from the rest.in visages come black tawny horror and fear.oh God,give me rest.

yet i comfort the few,living deeply through i.all this blood screams out,spilling out for the flies.

alas, alas, perhaps one shouts,yet all will be undone;when thy time has run out.

Notes

By the editor.

  1. The poem is written in a Scots-flavoured English. ken and wot, to know; nae, no or not; hwat, what; een, eyes; marrow, a companion or mate; bouer, bower; banes gang cald, bones go cold; ygh, I. The spellings hwat, hwer and hwen use the Old English hw- for wh-, as in hwæt, “what.” source ↩
  2. Sooth is the old English word for truth, from Old English sōþ, “true,” ultimately from the Indo-European verb “to be.” In Jhana Is Possession by Kami, or Ur-Sooth she argues that sooth is what old English might have called the root of tantra, so “this sooth” is truth that has to be undergone, not just believed. source ↩
  3. Two words are fused in the title. Weal, wellbeing, comes from Old English wela, “welfare, prosperity.” Weal, the raised mark a lash leaves, is a different word, from wale. The two merged in spelling, and the poem plays on the accident: the reaper's weal is both the rest of death and its stroke. source ↩
  4. The mare in nightmare is Old English mære, a spirit that sits on a sleeper's chest and brings suffocation and bad dreams; it has nothing to do with the horse. It is related to Old Norse mara and German Mahr. She uses “the Mare” in another sense, as the bounds around the Mother, in What the Ghosts Actually Are. source ↩
  5. In the Dao De Jing, chapter 11, thirty spokes are put together into one hub, and the wheel is useful because of the empty space in its centre. The poem's wheel breaks and is mended, but the thing that matters sits at the empty middle where the spokes meet, the “true weal in you.” source ↩