deity

the world veils my eyes,
presses me into the grave dress
before I have finished breathing.

but I know you are there
just past my hands;
tear off this wanton blindness
so I may see our union.

empty house

though I lit the lamp,
looked out at the window
I could not see you
around that long road.

still your voice
trails out of all four winds…

still my face is marked with grief
and you travel away from me
and I cannot bring you home;
I cannot find you here…

in the hearth, not even
the ashes stay warm.

I will go down
I will not wait for dawn
but that the edge of the river
will welcome me to sleep.

all is still; not even a whimper
to stir up dust.

the fathers

dead at the solstice, life leaving
(the soul flies away
for the comfort of the stone burrow)

full in the head, courting his own death
(she bears the night of the year
like a wound in her side)

with all things equal, birth the son
(the child hides in the ground
his dark head concealed)

seed flows, growth of full lust
(in her he places himself
as a promise made, kept, fulfilled)

old light is tired; darkness wounds it
(with seven words, he counts out
the life of his foster-father, murderer)

won to her side, bearing her to rest
(crowned with the fruit of the first king,
restless without knowing)

a balance level, and day shines concealed
(in a grey place fostered,
in many sorrows, nursed)

forethinking his death, he covers her
(the silence is as deep as world’s ending
thus as short)

dead at the solstice, life leaving
(again and again
we pass this way, and go on)

traitor/solstice

o lady, eternal lady,
queen and crown
blood and life!

you, traitor to both halves of the world
with a fractious share in both;
no whole heart from either.

intercede with me in darkness
and defend for me in light

cover me with your hands
that in my deep nights
some illumination may pass through -

shelter me beneath you
and from the fire
I will suffer no penance, no shame.

solstice/traitor

mother:

when the worn dark year
gives freely out life
over the wan snow
take for your bed the shining things,
the glittering in the eyes -
blind from surcease and not famine.

(no mourning
when for half the year you had respite
no mourning
when your ways were made gentle -
given corners, doors and roads, bending away
even mirrors, demure, refused to show all.)

with the foam a bright crest on the waves,
we mark our course straight past the sun
and the old year falls out behind us
with no words to send over the passage ocean
carried in your ears to the green lush bed.

certainly, in the heart of sun and growth,
there is no bitter cold seed rooted;
you have not borne the cuckoo’s egg this far
to leave death concealed in the breast of life.

weight

after a point, the lock
refuses to believe
that there are keys;
rather, I will keep this
like a second eye
to be king, amid cyclops.

but it is like swallowing
a little keen knife;
sooner or later
it will ask you to relent.

to linger

we: streaming, shaking water
to emerge from some rest without fathom,
boundary diffused into one wave or another.

then night became something we drowned on,
your mouth a cup and the thirst I got on it.
no fire warms me after that heat.

through doors and shut windows
under shallow hills, from the high head,
I cannot escape the memory.

though I tried: the breath of the black dog
that leaps and bounds from your hands
scents my road, coming and going.

gift/response

she accepts offerings of blue gems,
of rivers, of flies and flesh.

of her names, one word is spoken
in the gutter of a city;
more may be heard
amid trees which have never heard a footstep,
or on the bones of a mountain,
little stones crumbling.

all that is known is known to her.
being itself may be contained
in one crease of her body.

her breath makes men’s pulses burn
hotter than air, hotter than metal.
the least dust is her favoured child,
though she has forsaken all creation.

she says:
take no healing and no gift from me,
for I have not made you, but I have brought you forth.
I will be with you like a thrashing storm,
blood spread out over the waves
of a great and sightless ocean.
be either driven mad or deaf
from your sight of me.

I am [repost]

I am.

I am not the larvae
in the cave beneath the world,
but I am who placed them there.

I am the rising sun
that sweeps away darkness.

I am the darkness
that is singed until it remains
as a coal in the centre of fire.

I am the wing travelling the mountains.
I am the concealed stars, and the brightest.

I have birthed the Gods
to be eaten. I have received them again
in the virility of the seed.

I am the jaws of the insect.
I am the tongue of the snake.
I am the belly of the cosmos,
slit open by an obsidian knife.

I gave birth to rage
at the beginning.
When it is time to end,
I will take it all back again.
Nothing that exists or fails to exist
has come from other than me.

When the plant unsheathes from the ground,
it is towards me that it grows.

Fire was my gift to the world.

[Another older poem, this time heavily edited.]

taken flight [repost]

closer to death than birth, a perspective shifts;
fearlessness is unavoidable. we grieve:
for all aspects of a lost life, a human life
which experiences only one thing at a time.
after birth, we begin dying. there is no time
in which we are not ceaselessly renewed;
a seed will not shrivel into the ground again.
all wonder lives. all fear dies. there is nothing beyond
the final womb, therefore, fear nothing. there is
the face of all your fears, and look: it is only a mask.

[This was written some years ago. I would write it much differently now, which is why I'm posting the original version with no editing - trying to resist the temptation to rewrite history.]