THE TALIESIN SHADOWS
1
He comes forth by words,
out of darkness and brightness
(we, watching, blinded by both).
.
Out from blood, out from skulls,
out from the groves and the mist.
.
They tumble, birds from nets,
these wild words seeking skies.
.
The scent of oak and moss,
the scent of rust and iron blood.
.
A thousand years,
and still no-one has fathomed its depths.
.
The evening sky swept clear of life and death,
autumn clear with the tooth cold edge to it.
.
He has learnt to weave the shadows.
Mystery is his cloak, a feathered cloak of wings,
wings of words.
.
The meat of the past, the blood and muscle
of all forebears held in rhythm and sound.
.
They have perfected their own shadow,
full of mystery and silent horror.
.
Persistent dreaming encourages a certain familiarity
with dear monsters. “My awen is an ash spear”.
.
We talk to the spirits of the dead,
recounting their stories, reviving their memories,
reincarnating the spirit.
.
I will sing and sing and sing your words.
Your voice feeds my nerves
and I become, first, between, then other, then empty,
and you can walk in.
.
My shadow
becomes your shadow,
your words,
my words.
.
2
I open my mouth.
There is silence.
But now the wind
From the graves
Forms sound, the vowels,
The rivers of sound from the caves of wisdom,
From the mounds of remembrance.
.
I will not sing to the lords, to the rich kings.
I sing to the free, who lack good weather,
Who seek rain in drought, seek sun in storm.
.
The space of song.
They listen and travel through these words
To become closer to the divine.
This is my space. The protective weaving of poets’ words.
Enwrapped, entranced, protected within the poet’s rhythm.
3
Cauldron
This cauldron: iron hard consonants
Wrapped round and shaped by the curve of vowel.
What will it not encompass?
What shall never be encompassed by it?
.
Awen is greater than this cauldron’s expanse,
Awen is deeper than its deep resounding belly.
Powerful is the echo of that fortress of truth,
Yet an echo in the hills of distant thunder is what it is.
The ocean roar of awen in the cursive chambers of shell and bone:
A whisper of voices, millions, there are millions, from the deep before.
.
Deep as this cauldron is, and as ancient as its gigantic creators,
It cannot contain the horizons of Annwfn.
One part is understood and named,
Four-fifths remain eternally hidden.
A clear light blinds by its brightness
And the shadows deepen wherever it shines.
It cannot be named by names, it cannot be sung by songs,
It cannot be understood by philosophy,
It cannot be measured by maps.
Look up, look down, at the revolving stars:
It is there and not there.
Stir the bubbling verses in the honey cauldron:
It is there and not there.
In the breath and in the void
It escapes the understanding as the sun at sunset,
As the cuckoo in winter,
As the wren in the hedgerow.
There and not there,
A diminishing cry
Stirring the mind of poets.
.
He grows from his words – the seeds of sound
On the soil of listening silence.
Embodied, he is mystic light, a tricky one, iron hard steel.
An evolution of the world’s voice found in the dark tombs,
A clothing of golden brocade for liquid tongues.
They whisper in circles in their root-wrapped rooms.
The transcendence of death by the sages, by the brave,
By the wise, by the heroes who pass between, who pass on.
I have placed the words of the past in my body.
Golden, they rise up when my tongue bids it.
The mead flows, we drink and are drunk upon it.
.
The deep speaks, and it stirs the deeper still.
We are echoes and can trawl
The life beneath the single
Small light of the soul.
This voice overtones infrasound.
—
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