I met her once,
in a battered place
where Irish bombs blew
holes into an English city,
broken bodies writhing
as I looked down at the splinters
of a shattered friend
stuck deep into my shins.

I looked up dazed,
uncomprehending
of the nearing laughter
ringing in my ears,
blood dripping in my eyes,
and I could see her
as she crossed smashed chaos
of the cratered street,
lissome nakedness
stalking effortless
sword held idly in hand
through the blood and madness,
her ravens following,
fluttering from corpse to corpse.

As pale as white-capped
winter waves,
as dark as earth's occluding shadow
covering the moon,
icy cold despite the summer day,
effortless, she strolled
through smoking ruin
until she paused in her smooth
lope of striding
just where the twisted wreckage
of what used to be a car
still burned,
and gave to me a grin of such ferocious
joy and satisfaction
that I trembled with the surety
of my own approaching death
until she laughed,
and shook her head.

I have seen her sometimes since,
poisoning my television,
sometimes in a pale glimpse
of predatory shadow
through a war-zone jungle,
or a long-limbed figure leaning pale
from behind a shattered tank
or burning building,
but in all the violence pouring
from the screen what I see
most usually
is the joyful madness in her eyes,
the certainty that she
will always be
our welcomed avatar
of death, and war.