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Posts Tagged ‘consciousness’

Song of Bran

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 25, 2024| Leave a Comment »

VOYAGE OF BRAN (1)

For what reason

Does she call the Raven King,

Arcing over the waters to a safe land?

She is wedded to the song, blossom and fruit,

Calling from afar.

No matter where we turn

The music is invisible.

It sinks so deep that we sleep

And see what we cannot see,

Wish what we cannot know,

Set sail in hope on small boats,

Our lives no longer holding us

On their certain courses.

Cast adrift to find joy,

To measure it and move on

As the visions shift

And prophecies grow stronger.

We, in turn, become more, and less,

Floating above, sinking below.

The Raven sung by love to rest.

And restless shall they be

With and without this world.

The taste of the tree,

Never quite enough.

Never seen again,

Melting into the music.

Oh! Silver Branch!

–

VOYAGE OF BRAN 2

I turn back to see the future,

To see what has been missed.

A silver rent sings across the sky,

Laughter that only a world can make.

I know we dream, but do not know how to awaken,

Or if it is wise.

Water birds are screaming lies,

Hearts sink deeper into permafrost.

The smudge of sneers on too many faces.

Truth that was struggling is dead.

Best not to speak at all.

Let the world in, though,

That impossible branch of song,

To new pathways, new biologies.

Look back.

Has it not all been written of before?

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BRYN

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on March 25, 2024| Leave a Comment »

.

BRYN

Bryn does not care

Whether it is ice or storm.

It does not care which angry voice

Strides the world to call for war.

It rises as it always has

Making a horizon towards heaven,

Feeling the deep, slow pulse of the seasons

That is the heartbeat of the earth.

Feeling the downward blessings of rain

That trickles its poetry through

Heather root and bracken arch.

Bryn, that is no name at all.

Singing itself to itself.

The throne, the Elders, the Hosts,

The shining voice, itself to itself.

Holding its counsel, abiding in silence,

Resting alone. An island above the mists,

Above the green glow, moving the stars

And giving each its shelter

In its own dark womb.

.

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Crooked One

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on March 24, 2024| 2 Comments »

CROOKED ONE

.

Naked and moist am I

Burning with stars.

A sickle swept low

Severing chance.

Tongues silenced

Their excuses full,

The stories tedious,

Revealed as smoke.

One deep dark eye

That measures worth

Unblinking.

I bend slow and low

Gathering up and binding.

The web tied and untied

Between all things

That tastes of poetry

But is seed and blood.

Unmannered, hungry,

The world shall taste it

And be changed forever

We demean ourselves with pretty gods.

Lessen the glory of the pulse of life.

Fail to stretch beyond the familiar,

Discard the chance for conflagration.

A passionate average, a mean measurement,

A judicial lack of vision.

The wild world dances,

So we turn away to sink

To meagre cooling gruel from yesterday.

.

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UPLANDS: Where it begins

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on March 13, 2024| 3 Comments »

UPLANDS (4)

(Where it begins)

It is the mind (is it not?), that weaves the stuttered fragments

Of our own experiencing?

That makes a seamless landscape of sense, a fabricated clarity.

A story with fitting beginning, middle, end.

Hammocked between void and void we taste our own landscapes

In sweet and bitter.

Just so, we see the vast uplands there, rising smooth and even, up to heaven,

And do not feel the weight of mind, do not strain against the uneven road,

Do not catch breath at the long slopes, the impossible tussocked miles,

The scouring winds, the hungry rains.

We hold the truth of dream against the storm of tangled life.

The stories of the heroes, the builders, the survivors.

The steady, solid ones. Not the wrecked bodies, not the broken fingers,

Not the minds locked fast in relentless, ruthless faith.

Not the worn down, gap-toothed, corrugated, rusted.

Not the sightless windows. Not the tumbled walls.

Not the lichen-eaten names on tilted stone,

In ground once holy, now deserted.

Unhomed, we long for the home over there, in that heavenly blue gradient

Where peace must surely lie, a rippling shroud of psalm and skylark.

It sinks down. It all sinks down.

Covered, transformed in secret, wrapped in lightless pools,

Sucked dry by jealous peat.

This is where it begins, where life becomes holy, unnamed,

Ready to flow down into the valleys, green and sheep-scattered.

This is where the mulch is ground into futures,

And futures return to the past, and small things take control

Once and for all.

A gravel rain hits the windows in the valley.

The fire roars, fed with a world’s hungry breath.

We long, still, to be there: in the uplands of clear certainty.

Drained of doubt, stripped clean by simple necessity to go on,

Caressed by the wild that tests our bones:

The truth and freedom of powerlessness.

Doubtful moments gathered, sewn into a fine cloth.

Cloth wrapped around the meaningless distance.

A rainbow view, a bridge between body and void,

Longing, still, always, for both.

These uplands: hard to encompass,

The heart of things. Emptiness sublime.

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UPLANDS: wellsprings of the sea

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on March 12, 2024| Leave a Comment »

UPLANDS 3.

(Wellsprings of the sea)

It all begins from here.

Next to nothing.

With thoughts unrooted, heady.

Pulled out and upward to limitless blue distances.

It begins moving on the edge of the sedge-grasses;

On the uncertain, treacherous ground;

On the coolness of the wind that carries the spice of death

Deeply within its folds.

It begins on the copper whale-backs of time,

Arcing out of the valley floors,

Carrying scorched stars and the ink of jet certainty

Into the unknown orbit of delivered time.

It begins with a line of trajectory,

An abandoning of nicety,

An allowance of ululating song

And purposeless joy.

It begins with bones, begins with nakedness,

Begins with scattered remnants and piled stones.

It begins with remembering and forgetting,

And a pure tenacity to continue on.

It begins with a circulation of tears,

A saturated weight desiring heft.

Waters moving together, ribbons rippling out of sight.

Peat, brown as beer, iron-rich, blood of earth.

It begins before sound begins,

before the names arrive.

And then the names carry it into our own belonging,

Mapped out and pinned down steady.

Here and here and here,

we dwelt, we smiled, we died.

Always there, hinting blue, lost beyond reach.

Always yearned after, hazily recalled.

Always one step further, one crest away.

Always more real than the real,

Freer than freedom, a weightless soul flight.

There, with the buzzards, with the kites.

There with the patient grumbling stone,

With the stumbling cloud, the hissing mist.

A dream, really, of how it was, of how it will be.

The uplands of heaven, void and singing.

(40)

—

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UPLANDS : near eternal rules

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 12, 2024| 1 Comment »

UPLANDS

1 (Near-eternal rules)

A perfect sky.

My tangled, old hands

forget themselves.

The valley dreams of the uplands and

The uplands dream of heaven,

and sing it so.

Easy it is to breathe its names

In the luscious sap

of hidden streams.

Easy it is to forget, though,

how to remain there,

Discomforted by continents of swelling air,

The sweeping veils of rain,

the unlikelihood of easy paths,

and how the weighted body

Yearns for flight

and how all thoughts always turn back

To the curling, dreaming bracken

and sullen silent stone.

The harsh gods gravitate here,

Born of flesh and born again,

with their horns and thunderheads.

Mud-spattered,

they hew and heft,

carve deeply the near-eternal rules.

Their language, as guttural, as singing,

as the falling crevices’ echo.

As the waters do,

melting away long millennia,

shaping bodies for breath

and for joy.

The deep folds of a planet’s shifting dream

Upon whose hunched shoulders

All the little things thrive.

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Taliesin in Edinburgh (2)

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on March 11, 2024| Leave a Comment »

TALIESIN IN EDINBURGH

7

And shall I now sing the same sing

In the voice of sweet, sad Sorley?

Mugged on the streets by the muddle-headed,

The roar of impatient buses even in the cobbled ways

Hidden from any sunny truth.

The roar of modernity beating the brains

From the fallen doves of loveliness.

And the peace in the glens (where we lay

And forget even our names for a while),

And the peace of the hills (where we wept

With the rainbow promises of unlikely futures).

I shall walk with the ghosts down to the Grassmarket.

I shall nose into the deep pockets of Death

And await a sign, like Greyfriar’s Bobby,

And love it all, and lose it all – all the loud wanting,

All the measureless cloth and cut of status –

In the dusty bookshops down New Town way.

The hidden waters, unsuspected, below the gardens,

Below the pavements. The rock of ages

Staring down as it ever was: an emperor,

Purple in the dawn, where the pigeons quiver and coo.

It was mine. It was all mine, without taking one step.

Lungs filled with with barley malt from the breweries

There by Usher Hall. Seeping into every hope

On frosty mornings, the warm rusk scent of it,

Crossing the Meadows beneath whalebone arch

And cherry aisle. Old straight tracks

Converging on soot-black steeples.

Our slender grasp on life reaching for thistles

(And the harsh wind, a plaid of discomfort

Walking us into winter along the long grey cliffs

Of tenement and aspiring views).

Across the hills to the hills beyond,

And beyond that to the long dead hills

Dreaming in the Kingdoms of Fife

And the shining Forths.

Diesel chokes the throat at dawn chorus.

The sun, too neon, misses us out

And rises nonchalant.

The myth is always there, dressed in rags,

And us, looking down, scanning the pavements

For the wrong kind of gold.

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There We Are Then

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on September 8, 2023| 4 Comments »

Here.

There we are then.

Rainy morning.

The demons are sleeping.

Still summer

But there is a white quietness

In the air.

A sigh of traffic.

Floating on choices

The world drifts

For a moment

Deciding that hills and fields

Are best.

And a certain viridian

That belongs nowhere better.

Low cloud

Disguises everything else.

A small world glowing green.

.

Here we are then.

A few miles south from Beulah,

The seed of poetry

In every word.

Counting sheep and blessings,

Seeing the changes slow

And the changes fast.

The voices of the dead

Slowly accumulating

On the hillsides.

The fords full

And sullied

Spinning brown waters.

Reflection only

In still moments.

.

Here we are then.

Sun breaking through,

Bees at the honeysuckle,

Meadowsweet enough

To be making maidens

For the dispossessed.

Myth is the engine

Chugging in the cellar,

Fumes for the future,

Fuelled by dream

and prophecy.

Left here as time races on.

Piecing together clues,

Inviting menus,

Acrostic logic,

Randomly correct.

A divination, a distraction

From small glory.

.

Here we are then.

The footsteps of the dead

In every heartbeat,

Their sighs in every breath.

On the stairs

Their voices whisper,

In the halls

Their ghosts breeze by.

Belonging starts in the heart

And grows out from there.

Moses has not returned

From his mountain

And we have been left

To our own devices

Playing on coaltips,

Dabbling in poisoned streams,

Laughing at small jokes

And other’s discomforts.

Children still,

Beneath it all.

Watching the clock

We have never really

Learnt to read.

—

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In The Teeth of Winter

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 18, 2023| Leave a Comment »

IN THE TEETH OF WINTER.

.

The sun, it is hanging in the holly.

It is tangled in the oak tree.

It feeds what creatures it might.

.

The year, made of fruits, made of blossoms,

Is yet a cauldron of melting snow,

Barely born, barely breathing.

.

Kindled and crackling, the day spits shadows.

We are all storytellers when we can do little else.

Telling of deceit and guile,

And how the great sun could be brought so low,

Our saviour bound, hostaged.

.

A song to return our hopes.

A song to fend off darkness.

A song to teach the children

That all is not lost.

Though we fear it is.

–

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Stand Still (austerity)

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 24, 2023| 9 Comments »

If I can only stand still

Then all the competition shall fade away,

The last shall become first,

The first decay, and I shall remain.

If I can only stand still

As all sorrow and joy revolves about me

And blurs to time, and the time to eternity,

To one moment, and then that

To one who remained standing through it all.

If I can only stand still

The words shall come,

The truth and the prophecy

Will seed tremulous,

Hatch worlds

And pass away in wonder.

If I can only stand still

The fools shall stay silent,

The warriors grow tired of their excuses,

The rich find piety, the poor find solace.

If I can only stand still,

Give shelter to the small birds

And to the invisible weathers made of memory.

If I can only stand still,

The small light from the Pole Star,

Threading down my spine,

And only that one axis,

Held and held and finding peace there.

If I can only stand still,

Poised, regardless, rooted,

The vines solar, and the vines lunar

Winding up from my ankles.

Becoming rock, becoming mountain,

Becoming bark, becoming canopy.

If I can only stand still,

Place will become irrelevant,

Past, present, future

Roll up into a breath

And then not even that.

If I can only stand still,

It shall all be bestowed as a virtue,

As a beatitude, as a blessing.

If I can only stand still,

And not be this itching dust,

This hungry fire that must consume,

Consummate and move on, hungry still.

Made of dust and flowers,

Washed upon waves, sand sighed,

Sound sifted, shore-cast and motionless

With the roar of waves,

Unmoved, unrocked.

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