Magna Via

A walk which tests the legs and lungsOf all but the fittest as they trudge a pathWhich goads the time.Look down on Halifax when you crest the hillAnd you will not see what that knight sawWhen for his part in the slaughterHe took his due from Duke William.

The men who thought England their homeWould tell their sons – our England has gone.They could not doubt the castles whichHoused the Normans who turnedThe Saxon day into night –The words Beowulf spoke wereDegraded as the folk who worked the fields.

There were no Saxon heroes .The comet did not arc its way acrossThe heavens for Harold and his men –God rides with the conqueror.And so we have the book all knewAs Domesday, a book where ‘waste’Meant the sword ploughed the land.

When I was a child the folk who walkedThe path looked down on a worldChoked by the smoke from a forestOf tall chimneys peeping through the gloomOf a town thick with brass-making mills.But William’s ghost would have supped withThe mill owners and spat at their workers.