Corpse Road

‘Who’ll walk the corpse road back to me?’
– ‘Revenants’ Andrew O’Riordan

Where spring brings hope to downy birch
And blossoms of stars to blackthorn trees
When the hunt is still as the final frosts
Who will walk the corpse road back to me?

Where spring brings hope to drunks of the woods
With the pale potential of anemone
When my court dance in dew where a man lay cold
Who will walk the corpse road back to me?

Where spring brings hope to primrose hills
But none to vagrants on city streets
When wills clash like I do with impudent rivals
Who will walk the corpse road back to me?

Where spring brings hope to prison gardens
For a watchful moment the condemned walk free
When to solitary confinement comes Annwn’s darkness
Who will walk the corpse road back to me?

Where spring brings hope to those who can see it
Yet Victorian cells of asylums scream
When dreams of my kind are derided as madness
Who will walk the corpse road back to me?

Where spring brings no hope and death is release
And no fusion of flowers can quench the pain
When souls are lost as my absent queen
Will you walk the corpse road back to me?

* Poem written in the voice of Gwyn ap Nudd, a British King of the dead and the fairies

Birch Wood

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was a land of ash with no future.
Out of the ice age they came, colonizers
Silver-black and delicately snake skinned,
Shedding white edged leaves on the ash-clad winds

And singing do you remember, remember
The ice age and peat and lost Vindolanda,
Sentinel cities and burying oaths
Enstyled on bright birch to placate the world?

And singing do you remember, remember
The strange black peal of the blacksmith’s hammer,
Street lights of amber and echoing roads,
Cities estranged by the gathering smoke?

And singing do you remember, remember
How empire fell that fatal November,
Civilized monuments crashing to dust,
Swaying white fields and the soft song of ghosts?

Silver-black and delicately snake skinned,
Shedding white edged leaves on the ash-clad winds
Out of the ice age they came, colonizers.
Their land was ash, with an unknown future.

Forest

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I.

A forest
holds a very small possibility
in the sigla of trees
and in a ruddock’s song.

Raindrops lace the ivy,
in a cinema of shade
fairytales catch hands
with desperate grace.

II.

For in my nightmare
the leaning yew fell down.
The door to Annwn closed,
although the wolves still howl.

The people were dead,
the gods were gone
and the ghosts no longer mourned
their shadowed passing.

III.

Yet the forest
kept alive the possibility
of hope emerging
from its bowers

like a white stag bounding
from Annwn’s mounds
with red-eared hounds
and antlered huntsmen.

IV.

Now we read
the sigla from the trees
and listen out
for a ruddock’s song.

In the cinema of ivy
our myths still dance
a forest of possibility
in a raindrop’s glance.

Calling

Before my calling I slept in a glass coffin.
No-one knew if I was live or dead until
I raised my head. And still they are pondering.

Whilst I slept I watched processions
of black clad men carrying coffins,
who march here still putting time
to death, brief as dragonflies.

Their echo beats loud. In woodlands
at March I search for a heartbeat, whilst
mad winds whirl the winter skies overhead.

Roads steal sound. Pylons warp every sense.
Yet when I look the past in the eye it looks back.
They need us now as much as we need them
and the people of the future need us again.

For live or dead there is no rest, no place
to hide nor coffins left, only time processing
through both worlds to a fathomless end.

The King of Faery

In woodland damp, a shady dark divine
On aged slope the creeping ivy climbs.
Caressing thorn and dressing ash with vine
A poison maid spreading her locks sublime
Drapes kingdom fair with wanton waxen shine.
The deep earth’s lawless vagabond of joy
Cords heart shaped leaf where eldritch magic lives,
Ascends, protects the glamorous abode
Of fair folk ancient as the darkness of the wood.

Rooted fast at the foot of hallowed hill
In somber silence stands a leaning yew
Ghosts and needles shadowing its boughs
Whispers hanging sorrowful and true,
Of pageant stately passing at full moon.
Yew tree hides the underworld’s feared gateway
Beneath the haunted watching of its roots.
The wise and dead or reckless seek entry
Imploring the illustrious King of Faery.

~

His spectral shine shimmers white as moonlight
His hair floats fair about his phantom limbs
His warrior attire is black as night.
The eyes of the hunter of souls are grim
As the howl of his hounds on Annwn’s winds.
His dread black steed is a beast of the marsh
Dripping like the sea, his whinnying swims
Like a wetland dobbie bridging the worlds
And hurtling his way across the oak covered swamp.

The King’s pale face is black with wrath
For an eldritch dream killed by disbelief.
Souls who crossed to Annwn to be reborn
Stagnate in the gloom of apathy’s reign.
Through a mist of twilight doomed rides the King.
He travels the path of the Ribble’s old course
From the heart of the hill the death knell rings.
Decked in somber garments the fair folk march
Calling souls to the underworld with funeral spells.

Litter in the Valley

‘If the doors of perception were cleansed
Everything would appear to man as it is: infinite.
For man has closed himself up.’
–          William Blake ‘The Marriage of Heaven and Hell’

Litter in the valley-
when people pass by
I see their minds are littered with debris;
carrier bags squashed, squeamishly sodden,
crisp packets tattle in the trees.
Chocolate wrappers with dirt in their pockets
chase like dogs without leads.
Discarded, a full can with a wasp in it,
dead, fermented in the void.
Shattered bottles glass the earth,
cider vessels huge and vacuous,
squeezed shut as if by the jaws of some great mutt.
A sip of vinegar slides along the bottom,
seeps out leaving a stench-
stains on the valley,
a land of garbage.

Cleanse the doors of perception and you will see
roots from the earth’s depth towering upward to infinity,
peppered bark- tan, brown, silver, grey,
tough, rough, notched, spot a gnarlen face.
Feel the clog of loam on your feet,
smells like umber, hidden paths and treats.
The swish of the leaves, damp and orange curls
twitching brown, yellow curve citrine,
amber shells, red night dancers and newly fallen green.
Halt! Hear the intangible snap, see them float,
swaying like boats, turning like sun dials
as bright beams break through the boughs,
raising mist from cold clarity of the stream.

So why crust over this sacred vision with debris,
facies hippocratica, waste site insult to all that is living?
Everything sings, everything feels and dreams.
Open your mind and clear the litter from the valley.