The Chariot Burials

Wheeling through the clotted earth,
            Bronze, bone, and leather clumped in clay,
We rolled below the world’s new birth
            While all the old was burned away.
                        We thundered through our barrows
                        Beneath the deepening harrows
            Until the plow dragged in the light of day.

Then came the scholar’s brush for bone,
            With pick and trowel to nip around.
We had been better left alone
            Than raised beneath this scratching sound.
                        Now our horses stand
                        Chest-deep in ashy sand,
            And we’re pulled screaming from unhallowed ground.