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Cherished ( The Ancestral Speaks)

May 15, 2014 by simonhlilly

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1
We are, after all,
Nowhere other than here:
Held in the soil-stained hands
Of earth.
Held as a wish, a dream,
A joy, a grief.
Gone home to rest, to be cast,
To be moulded, kneaded.
To be on the cycle,
To be recycled,
To be returned,
To be cherished.

2
The dream was of the great circles, Stonehenge, Avebury. Their function, to stop people “falling through earth”. To set them back on the wheel in the right cycle, the right place.
Using the right quality of sound and space, the right length of rod, the self-healed, snake-strewn ground.

3
Drawn up awake
But dreaming.
Brought all to the rivers
By moon-faced reflection:
The one face.
Drawn out awake
Yet asleep, soul’s home
Bright revealed.
Pierced by blade and bleeding,
Held, not allowed to fall through,
We shall be returned, given life.

Turned, turned , the road become moonlight.
Flesh golden, stripped of burdens,
Certain ratio, a spell of line and curve,
Placed on the wheel,
A language of trajectories,
Forces multiplied and compensated,
An art of vectors, of prophecy,
A heft of distinctions.
Revived with tongue and breath,
A dance in footprints,
The learning of a song,
Its thousand thousand verses.
Its drummed rhythms
Its curses, its blessings.
Jewelled serpent:
Her back, the path of the sun.
Remember,
Those of you who know,
The bite, the sting, the knowing.

4
There shall be three:
The child, the man, the woman.
Eternal, bound, faceted.
In threes the remembrance.
In threes the curse.
In threes, the healing….

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Book of Hours (continued 2)

May 14, 2014 by simonhlilly

4
(Nones)

Swallows dancing
At the eaves:
An architecture
Of song.

Round worlds:
Nests take
The form of heaven
The form of earth.
Lined soft,
Down heartbeat,
Safe and sound.

—

6
(Compline)

A perfect moon
In a perfect sky:
Perfect hymn,
Perfect prayer.

All night
In dew-wet fields
Lambs call to their mothers,
Mothers to their lambs.

On shrouded paths:
Solomon’s seal,
Lily of the valley.
Simple grace.

—


The original Hours of Prayer were seven, but over time some combined together, like Matins and Lauds at sunrise, and some seem to have been dropped, or abbreviated, like the Vigils throughout the night. We are poorer for some freedoms. The rhythms and tides of quiet attention lock us into a humbler being within the world.

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Book of Hours ( continued)

May 13, 2014 by simonhlilly

4
(Vespers)

Evening sun.
Letting the world
See itself
Through my eyes.
We both rest,
Content in each other.
Birch bending –
Shallow tide winds,
A breath moving
over the waters.
We rest
Contented.

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Mingled (Book of Hours)

May 13, 2014 by simonhlilly

MINGLED

1
Matins

Mingled
A corded, thin delight
A wandered stream
Water and light
Water and light
The small bright hearts
Calling out daylight
Ached between clouds
The blue clouds
Pearl bright heaven.

2
Terce

It has grown now
Green and golden
Rounded as a cloud
Bright as butter
A light harvest
A sun feast.

3
Sext

A dappled day
A cowslip day
A buttercup day
A bowl of cream light
Hours blooming and dissolving
Sparkled with rain.

—

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Brecon Beacons

May 8, 2014 by simonhlilly

Violet blue
The bluebell haze.
Twisted, threaded,
Through and through
The oak green.

The shadow dropped
From big-breasted hills
Rolling in waves:
Valley’s deep sigh.

The road sways:
Head, this way and that
A hound seeking home,
The river snake’s companion.

I am blown free and torn
In this cloud-edged land,
Misted and veiled
All purposes tasted.

A scumble of swifts
Above the black poplars.
A heaven white scent
The rowan, the hawthorn.

The names: a rough reed bed
Tempered with savoured vowel.
Roughshod, a blacksmith’s anvil
Of a language.
Meanings annealed, malleable,
A memory of saint and well
And sandal.

A here and a there
Where miles elongate
Or evaporate.
Where moments grow roots,
Deserve names, a fame
For remaining.

A valley cloud, high and low,
A wooded place, an inhabited mound,
Yew and chestnut,
A fading, rained-upon blossom
An adherence to loneliness.

—

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DYLAN

May 6, 2014 by simonhlilly

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I read a little Dylan Thomas last night. First time for a long time. “Under Milk Wood” is a true classic, but much of his other verse writing, I find a welter of words that quickly become too rich and dark for my stomach. But it is jazz. A complex, distressing barrage of improvisation that stuns the prissy levels of consciousness and lets the bardic, raw unconscious voice reel in delighted freedom of sound and association. A windful sky of darkness racing with occassional glimpse of translucent still starlight. So here I am, witless and broken backed…..

DYLAN
1
Son of the wave
A fluid tide jazz
Murmuration of starling words
Swinging drunk
Self-eloquent
Singing down evening lanes
The world exultant
The world squeezed
Tumbling in woven line
Dancing on tender, long toes
Sparkling.

2
My father’s mother, too, was a Thomas,
Small as a mouse with a shout and a bite
Who faded fast, turned white, drowned in herself,
Lost and homesick for something lost.

And I, maybe, now abraded down to
A Welsh road of rolling river words
Tied golden, chained to tongue
A dance for ears, mighty, joyous,
Cloud-wrenching, heart-bursting soliloquy.

3
A deliquescent, delightful urination
Of golden words.
A mushroom-minded mouthful
Of minced meanings.
A rhythmic tumble, a murder of crows,
A wild macaw of seagulled callings,
A taste of death, sweet and dusty.
So falling a sound, so rising,
A breathless gander, a meander,
A vast river of undone spun
Spick and span trodden sound.
A rush, a relief, a rocket acceleration
Of howling words
Through one bright mind.

4
O Dylan, a dilation
A look you here
A gone-to-bed-at-noon,
A fluster of seed heads
Blown in breezes,
The drunken, dizzy delight
And a slow, slow, solidifying
Concretion of the weight
And want of seconds,
Rapid, rapid, the going and the coming
Of sparrows, the flutter of days
Between spark and darkness
Of death worm dark.

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Two for a Sunday

May 4, 2014 by simonhlilly

SERMON

From his pulpit
On the top-most branch
The wood pigeon’s
Sonorous sermon
Drones, resounding,
Slow around.

Beneath him,
Hidden in back-pew bush
Disrespectful sparrows,
In their Sunday best browns and bibs,
Chatter and play,
Impious, but loved,
Regardless
Of the Most High.

—

LIGHT

An instant before birdsong.
Time returns with increments of colour.
Light is all there is:
Light frozen, light expanding.
We orbit meaning, voiceless
In wonder,
Witnesses to glory.

—-

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Conversations with Invisible Friends 13

May 2, 2014 by simonhlilly

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WINGS

Looking over the hills,
Low cloud,
Dusk after rain.
I would wish you
All wings,
My friends.

—

SOUND CHAMBER

This voice born from caves
This voice shaping emptiness
This voice, the flavour of silences.

—

CUP

This vessel of poetry
Always lucid, empty
Til held and warmed
By palms, tipped
Towards lips,
An exchange of breath..

—

TICK

There is no time
In the worlds of spirit,
Nor in the worlds of matter.
Only in the mind of Man
Does the click and tick
Of moments
Signify a neurotic cauldron
To oblivion or eternity.

—

HAVEN

This mind, timeless, anchored
Rocks, sways, on word tides.
Gull-wind senses roam and wheel
Searching food.
The patterns of love
And belonging
In rippled reflections.
Harboured, havened, home.

—

SLIGHT

Sweet violet
White and nodding,
Rising in damp westerlies.
Prophets with blazing heads roar by
Raving,
Not hearing, not caring.

—

SEMIOTICS

Nice, nice, nice!
(Triple nice denotes favour of the gods),
a vapour aromatic, bitter,
Rising from certain, approved of,
Sacrifice.
One who knows his place
And knows it might
Be nowhere particular,
Except the particularity
Of cloud chambers
And the silent
Expansion of a supernova
(Inexplicably given
Nomenclature
Of someone’ wife).
The only object
Is its name.
Three moving lines.
Hence the wise man
Remains silent
Watching the return
Of swallows.
No blame.
—

IN THE MACHINE

Love the depths!
What computers really dream,
what they say to each other,
not just oh and one,
but a cosmology of dark spaces,
exploding stars….

—

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Beltane Dawn

May 1, 2014 by simonhlilly

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BELTANE DAWN

1
A thin thread: birdsong squeezed through,
Floods open: light, blue and still.
Time dances, each moment
A coming and a going.
A sound of slow wingbeats,
A calling of mating angels.
Souls tumbling together
In the undergrowth.
The vapours of summer:
Arising smiles.
The song grows stronger:
A limitless uncurling,
A gesture of compassion,
A mudra of offering up.

2
Still pillows:
The grey cloud
Furled, uncurled
A world greened.

Two slow crows,
Shadows mated,
North by north-east
Over the dew wet fields,
Over the singing wood.

Light pushed in
From subtle edges.
A moment of flowers,
Blossomed exhalation.
She stretches in sleep,
A sudden perfume.

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Tree Spells

April 30, 2014 by simonhlilly

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1
Oak Spell

The key to the oaken door
Not a path nor a way in
Not light nor darkness
Not beginning nor ending
Not staying nor returning
Not wanting nor acquiescing
Not song nor silence.
Ivy, light as air,
Weighs down the branch.
Steady and strong is the day:
At either end it fades without fight
Into darkness.
—

2
Oak Spell

Upright, holding
Roaming and remaining still
A name that knows it is not all
A home for everything forgotten
Wheel’s heart, circle’s centre
A pool, a fountain, a furnace
A dwelling place, a dark lightning,
A storm passing in summer
A burden of never forgetting
A dream awake and dreaming
A way in and a way out
A spiral,line sharp to the heart
A wonder, a well, a cliff of sight.
What it is, is not at all.
What it is not, becomes itself.
Oak woven betwixt, between.
Key to the oaken door
To turn round and round
Moving stillness into stillness
Folding all songs into one note.
—

3
Monterey Cypress

(Spell of resolve and resolution)

This heart.
This spirit.
Green fire
Lit heavenwards.
Silent root upheld.
A way through night.
A way through day.

—

4
Sweet Chestnut

(Spell of presence: 1)

It cannot be striven for,
It cannot be gained.
There is no plan, no scheme
To find the Now.
It is not fixed, it is not shaped,
It has no excuses, no stories, no reasons.
The foundation of everything,
It is key without door.
Going nowhere it remains the centre.
Only silence can live there.
Breath wraps it around,
Though it is not breath.
Sight rests upon it,
Sound flows through it.
The taste of Now
Is the cool, lucid water
Of life.

—

5
Sweet Chestnut

(Spell of presence: 2)

It cannot be captured
It cannot be held
It is rested upon, dropped into.
Its mystery is complete.
It cannot be sought,
It is nowhere else.
It has no measurement.
The only thing we have
Is the most difficult thing to see.
The gold of the sun:
Blinding to the eyes.

This abstract moment-
Indestructible, empty,
Chimes,
Reverberates.

—

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