better the poems talk

The seed festival is on Saturday 18th at Hawkwood College, Josie and I, and the harp, have a tent pitched on the same level ground where the spring rises, and it will be poetic. I want to deal with the twin components of a poem, talk of dual energies, consider the religious and creative impulses, quote from the book of changes: "For night is born of midday when Yang breaks up into Yin". Josie's volunteered to give me a few warning notes if I bang on.  Some days, I'm as likely to cite, no energies.  We'll see.  Pamphlet for sale. 

Two faces to match the boar, ruthless and red, with regards to Pierre, "each man in his time..."

We will start with the harp, then into this Pagan first, from the version by Robert Graves, as I remember it. "I am"'s inter-changeable, or to be added as they fit.  This seems a good way to begin, close as we are to the country of bards.

 

The Song of Amergin

 

I am a stag of seven tines

a flood across a plain

I am a wind on a deep lake

a tear, the sun lets fall,
I am a hawk above the cliff
a thorn beneath the nail,
a wonder among flowers
I am a wizard!  Who-but-I
sets the cool head aflame with smoke?

 

I am a spear that roars for blood

a salmon in a pool

a lure from Paradise,

I am a hill where poets walk,

I am a boar, ruthless and red,

a breaker threatening doom

I am a tide that drags to death,

an infant, who but I
peeps from the unhewn dolmen arch?

 

I am the womb of every holt

the blaze on every hill
queen of every hive
shield for every head,

I am the tomb of every hope.

_____

 

Does anything stir - Ancestral voices!