Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, First Branch, from the hill of Narberth, human nature, landscape, Mabinogi, myth, Poetry, Rhiannon, Wales on January 26, 2022| Leave a Comment »
—
MOTIF – FIRST BRANCH
There is the sound of it:
The distant clip-clop of blossoming time,
A dream whisper, a faint scent,
A breeze, a wish.
.
Still we have not learned much
And rush to question
And rush to hold.
In full armour,
Pierced, weighed down,
Heart-broken.
–
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged analogy, consciousness, First Branch, landscape, landscape photography, language, Mabinogion, Poetry, Pwyll, reality, self-, Wales on September 14, 2020| Leave a Comment »
FIRST LESSON
You will have been wandering, I suppose,
Through the sunny, vague landscapes of your life
Following the habitual hounds of thought
Weaving in and out your thoughts.
.
You will have come across these words,
Sucking them up, making them yours
Before even thinking, before even thinking,
To whom do they belong? Whose voice, now?
.
We believe ourselves sovereign here:
My mind, my territory, my dwelling place.
But is that really so? (is what I ask.)
You have wandered into other worlds
Oblivious of boundaries, so hungry for more,
So sure of what is.
In an instant, becoming something else
( a folded, entangled irony, to enjoy all the horror movie themes).
.
A skin not yours adheres,
So you become something you were not.
What we do, we become.
What we take in, becoming our responsibility.
.
Shimmering are the edges of the world.
Mirrors and doorways are everywhere.
Names are roles and speech
Sets about great tidal shifts.
.
You know what you know now
By becoming what you were not.
A communion of voices.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ancestors, art, awareness, consciousness, dream, First Branch, Hill of Arberth, landscape photography, Mabinogi, Otherworld, Poetry, strategy, the numinous, time, vision, Wales on May 19, 2020| Leave a Comment »
ON THE HILL OF ARBERTH
Shall we climb the yonder green mound?
Expand our view to the wide unseen horizon,
See wonders, see the unattainable brilliance?
I shall tell you a story where the darkness shines
As bright as the glory of day,
Where the horror shouts loud enough
To wake the doorkeeper between worlds,
Where the pictures come as clues to other strange things,
Where places reconstruct in cellular aggregations
Down the spine and the tides of new air
Tingles with the riddles of a new way
To lose certainty and find a better truth.
Rest now.
Time and space is full already with this world.
Watch as patterns shift.
In shadows and slowed moments
Other worlds can show themselves,
The other that is not the other.
( the woodpigeon’s grey cool song
And the deep green wind between the hills).
It is so full, so full.
Let go the river downwards.
Just below, just below the known
Are the vast halls of golden brocade,
The sapphire cool pavements, as it were.
Wait, unframing, un-naming.
Roads are small patterns of consistency.
Mingle the words of in and out.
Lay one on another without choosing.
Climb the green rise and see what might be seen:
Distance, shimmer, dazed,
What is there is elsewhere.
Soften and dissolve the sight –
That is the way, ( a voice says), to see outside.
The mirror ripples, water turns to rock.
The slow creatures stop to dream,
The warm air chants with bees’ hum.
One step without moving.
There is an art to it akin to drunkenness and despair.
Waiting, not wanting control, dissolving slightly,
Wavering a haze of possibility.
Silence. The deep is the dream
That dreams you here.
—
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged annwfn, art, Autumn, bardic, deep ecology, druidic metaphor, First Branch, landscape photography, Mabinogion, Otherworld, Poetry, Pwyll and Arawn, samhain, symbiosis, Welsh myth on November 1, 2016| 2 Comments »
Samhain in Annwfn
Transgression by assumption.
You have taken what does not belong
By assuming everything you see here
Is yours by right.
Taking what is mine
You shall take my role and duty.
You shall by this become completely me
(And yet not), and I you.
Enter the deep and see perfection
And its flows.
Twilight woven through with gold.
A brocade worn thin and transparent,
Sky-patched, redolent.
A more perfect dream
Sunk into the depths.
As if eyes had been staring at the sun:
Now everything veined red-gold,
Too dark and too bright to see,
An inner burning light that dims the world,
Makes sense of flickers and ghosts,
And tongues of fiery liquid language
Scarce understood but lascivious.
Skin turned fallen leaf, crunched,
Made liquid, sucked up,
A new wine burning with blushed passion
Or so it may seem.
The skill here
Is not to weigh nor judge
But to lick the lightest air and breeze
And swim undisturbed, unseen
According to most fluid laws.
Dreamed but not dreaming,
A metaphor eternal, echoing.
There is, and never was, a thing made single,
Nor one made so especial
It could not be reflected endlessly
In midnight pools.
And all this
Only a beginning.
A recalibration.
A falling leaf
Slowly spinning.
A kiss.
A message.
It will be dust in the morning.
But the ache of memory:
That will be the always hidden gold.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged annwfn, art, bardic, cycles, First Branch, gnomic, landscape photography, Mabinogion, mystery, overlay, Poetry, reflection, Rhiannon, the Deep, the Hidden, translucence, Wales, Welsh literature on October 24, 2016| 5 Comments »
Rhiannon’s Riddle
These my bare branches,
These the days of moonlit silence.
Seven are the ones lost to sleep
That should have been watchful
That should have been truthful.
A claw of cloud has stolen
my golden light, my golden sun.
I am sunk down by it and sullied,
Weighed by each retelling.
Bound again by careless generosity,
Bound by those not blameless.
An open honesty shall allay my worry,
And watchful bravery and a clear discrimination.
The hunter has risen and taken my firstborn light.
I am become wolf tied to stone,
Wandering the same road
Weighed down by it.
At night, the high table of the feast.
Neither here, neither there,
This road of travail, this cloak of flesh.
Golden is the harvest moon,
Birdsong of the morning.
All is fog
And my bright boy is gone.
The son eaten by the mother,
The mother deceived by her sisters
The hunter and his prey, taken, restored.
Pay attention Pwyll!
What is yours, is illusion.
Deeper by far is the world you walk.
My heartache is in this coming and going,
Half the time here, half the time
In a somewhere else,
more, or less, reflected perfect.
I will wait for you though.
Wait another year on year.
You shall only need to ask,
Only listen.
The footsteps beneath the ground,
The silver paths.
It shall all find return.
—
simonhlilly 