When the Legions Came

Above the North wind at the edge of the known world

where talking heads and giants dwell

and where stories of dragons unfurled,

lay an Isle of mystery and mists

a blessed land of apples, unicorn kissed

or so their legends went…

It was how they saw our land.

To claim it for their own their plan,

so a vast army they sent

to make desolation and call it peace

Pax Romana Ha!

For centuries to be slaves no hope of release.

Across the ferocious mere in galleys they rode

wave horses bucking them to and fro

Eagle standards like needles on show.

Legions of conquest with craven allies came

from this day forth

nothing would ever be the same.

Samnites, Thracians and treacherous Gaul’s

Roman denarii filling their treacherous halls

Some we had met and fought before

In the lands of Iberia

These arrogant men of war

But…

never had such a machine violated

our blessed Isle, our sacred shores.

These whores from foreign lands

with scorpion, ballistae and catapult 

who came to taint the pure white sands.

Sky sheep away from the horizon flocked

from the shadow of the thunder-wolf,

who with lightening smile mocked

our bodies in woad strung blue

lime washed hair stiffened a frightening hue

And Torc’s that shone with the power of Sol.

We monsters of the Isles bared our teeth,

ready their bodies to rend, their blood to shed

upon the slashing swords of the murderous horde

bound with madness by the Druids cord

drunk, on stewed mandrake and henbane brew

the chosen of the Gods, berserkers insane

the sacred few.

The war raven on black wing flew…

Waiting to pick the bones of those we slew.

Singing irrational anthems clashing our shields,

their blood we’d spill on the green of our fields.

Their auxiliary curs cowed as the great boar

Carnyx howled, ‘R’vannith’ our deafening roar

and charged after our chariots leading us into war

and death rained from above.

Cracking limb and crushing bone

we tired to drive these invaders home

hack by slash back into the sea

but it became a blood soaked melee.

Draco’s cavalry with whistling

dragons on our flanks

the whistles became a deafening roar

as they smashed our ranks…

from that point on we were lost

for centuries to pay the cost

that day…

the legions came.

Upon pilum and gladius we died

in our thousands, and our women cried

before their liberty was taken without a smile

by the legions who destroyed

the myth of the misty Isle.

So fugacious fugitives we became

wraiths haunting our own land

our insurrection a game

doomed not to last

as into legend we passed

Nothing was ever the same

once the legions came.

© P Williams 2005