EXIT STRATEGY
.
Easy to make reckless plans with full bellies,
But many hearts sank in silence amid the wild enthusiasm.
To drag us all into darkness is the destiny of heroic leaders,
And it is they and their names will be ever remembered
By the sleek, sleazy poets collecting their nightly gold.
.
Of course, there were plans and there was strategy.
Of course, it was not immediate – that dissolution
Into the suffocating mists of isolating fear.
The poets’ make clear that there was some fine history there.
But we went into the great design believing we brought light and honour
And hoping quietly for at least a little plunder to justify the slaughter.
.
No one had told us that the air there would be sharper than our steel;
That our proud bellowing voices would be snuffed out
Only by the weight of the unutterable silence of that place.
That the chains that chaffed us, ( the poet’s said), were the very sinews
That held our bones and breath, our only strength, our only continuity.
.
We shall be mocked and sneered at by any who survive,
Even refined orators driven mad by the senselessness and broken screams of it.
These bright heroes dragged dizzy from the conflagration of hearts,
Goodness sold for pennies or twisted into shields to refute incompetence.
Greed disguised as quest. That tomb will not be opened.
No triple spells to cajole the lost towards a familiar banality.
No back to normal as the ghostly voices weigh down the thin air
With starved dreams and the corpses of tomorrow’s children.
Nothing but worms, now, of glory.
A heroic sunset it was, and now the cold darkness is creeping in.
.
simonhlilly 
Is epopeic an English word? Likely not. This reminds me of an epopee; that sensorial sharpness in chain to sinew to continuum, and in conflagration of the hearts. It’s searing language. Is this inspired by Taliesin?
Thank you, João-Maria. It is somewhat inspired by the Taliesin poem “ Preideu Annwfyn” and also the Second Branch of the Mabinogi, both of which deal with invasions of the Otherworld that end in utter disaster. Both are mystical rescue missions of one sort or another. So that is the mythic sub-text, but the spark that fired the words was the impending disaster that is Brexit. And I suppose it is the endless disaster of humans following shining leaders into death and darkness for no benefit to themselves or their families.
Not that there is much luminance in the leaders you subtly accite. They are blindness, and as the adage goes, the only thing light and dark share is their capacity to blind. I did feel a whiff of the reactive in the poem, but it is well-hidden, and thus the composition lives as something outside of time.
It’s rather beautiful. I’m not too knowledgeable of Celtic poetry, so I shall explore the poems that you mentioned. Thank you for this.