The Sutton Hoo Helmet
625 A.D.
The opulent barbarian who cleaved
through tribes of men as savage as his own
wore this, a dragoned helm, to butcher villages
and rape the screams he burned alive in huts.
Iron, bronze, gold, garnet, whetstone,
the eye of Odin and silver wiring,
zoomorphic panels framed with Celtic knots —
months of handiwork for King Rædwald,
the scholars guess. It would have passed
from smith to smith, whose blackened fingertips
shattered dawns with hammer-blows that clanged
startled flocks away. Their bleary sons
called out from cots likely stumbled to the forge
and in their grudging starlit hunger fell
into commands, disgusted by the stench
of leather soaked with sweat. All this to gleam
a century of grunts, illiterate
as the hawk that raids a vulture’s nest
to eat the young of those who eat the dead.
Behold it now, a curio of rust
and rot, the green regalia that reigned
a singled brain’s ancient bitter throb
for more. Behold its seams all split. Behold
the human shape that any head might fit.