English Oak

Old tree stump

What do you know?

The corn has been cut

Now only corn storks grow

Where are the dancers

Who with their right hand

Lead you in the dance

Across an ancient land?

Plush are the hay bales

Rolled up to sleep

Lying in their yellow beds

Yellow blankets at their feet

Somewhere salty death

Is wrapping her fingers

Around the candle stick oak trunks

And waxing its leaves

It’s bleeding in the heart wood

It’s rotten to the core

But it stands upright in the night

And shines on all the more

It shines on in its dying

And in its finest hour

It shines until the sunlight

Has burnt out all its power

And in the death of the English oak

Grows something more

Not as strong as once was known

Its mantlepiece not made of stone

But a force to hold a door

Less in its redistribution

among the rising ranks

But in its ten thousand multitude

For its own strength we still give thanks