“I was a speckled white cockerel
Covering the hens in Eidyn”.
1
The egg is the sun,
Laid from the dark feathers of night,
Nested in the dawn of the world.
I am the grain of truth
Radiant in the drunkard’s boasts,
Naked in the silent waiting.
I learnt all languages from the waves,
All harmony from the tides.
Neither bird nor beast,
A tree in the forest am I,
A thousand eloquent tongues of green fire.
At dawn the cockerel calls my name.
Clear Song. Hall of Light. Mound of Obedience.
2
A domestic mythology.
A farmyard mythology.
No wolves, no hungry obstructors
Racing across space devouring sun and moon.
A black hen pecking the dust for grain.
In the corner of the eye
Time nailed fast to a new course.
3
Ah! The seed of poets
Spilling into the dark crevices
Of a fertile earth.
More precious than gold,
The desire for it,
More precious than song,
The moans in the hour of midnight.
I would strut and sing,
Hold all in dizzy thrall.
The girls would love it:
The boldness of it, the sly word,
The sliding, echoing eloquence.
Drunk would they be – the men snoring
Dreaming of a good death;
The girls tap, tapping on my door,
Filled with wonder till dawn’s light.
The seed of poets is an endless forest,
A skilful net of shining catch.
4
In Eidin I had dominion of the hill,
Dominion of the Mound, dominion of the castle.
A steady fortress was my staff,
Planted and reaching to heaven.
The gulls of Leith, the ravens of the Crags:
None was more raucous than I,
None more forthright in the bright morning,
None more persuasive in torchlight flicker.
They would rise softly ( like the Lammermuirs).
They would dip and sigh and open (like the Pentland Hills
Under a summer sky).
And I, the open tomb, echoing,
Doorway to golden moments freed from earth,
Free from guilt and sin.
A golden morning in the scattered dust,
Seeds uncovered, beginnings shining, a new sun,
New worlds nested, round and warm,
A clutch of futures, a prophecy of birth.
5
In a line or two
The bonny hero
Shall have his come-uppance.
Try as he might, the slippery eel,
The voracious worm, the flying hawk,
Shall be brought to justice, consumed, dead,
Himself eaten whole, adversaries conjoined,
The dark mother victorious.
6
Above Marchmont, above Morningside,
Above The Meadows, my covering wings,
My tremulous touch, sunlight penetrating
The deep hidden waters.
On The Mound, on Castle rock, on the Crags,
I brighten and burst forth.
On Arthur’s Seat I am resplendent.
I take my pleasures on the pleasant fields of Portabello;
I dive in the secret quiet waters of St. Margaret’s Loch.
The fortress is mine.
A crimson tram the long length of Prince’s Street.
A swoop down to genteel Inverleith.
My thirst goes forth beyond the shining rivers,
The blue hills dreaming in Fife
And the leaping span of poetry
To cross over it all to mystery.
My name is Taliesin.
I am the cocaine of bards.
Nine breaths of my cauldron,
And you are mine.
—
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