Poetry | Contemplative Inquiry

Tag: Poetry

CHANT

The hour when minute by minute
The colours are stolen away
When red goes brown and black
And green goes grey

The simple twilight-falling hour
The twinkle hour the dewdrop minute
When the hare with a scuffle is gone
Through long grass with a forked twig in it,

When thrush drops down
Last loud chirrup and jig
From the alder top bare
Lo then is the time of calling and taking,
Of mating, and the enlarging of mind into mind,
When the eye thinks and the light stays behind.

Chant by Philip Ross Nichols Prophet, Priest and King: the poetry of Philip Ross Nichols, edited and introduced by Jay Ramsay Oak Tree Press, 1989. Ross Nichols – ‘Nuinn’ – founded the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids (OBOD) in 1964.

December 11, 2012

ANOTHER POEM

Here is another take on the divine child theme – this time by Nuinn (Ross Nichols), who led OBOD in its 1964-75 manifestation. Ross’ poem is called ‘The Coming Child’.

We have created a web of flesh and blood

A fish in our river, a frog in our shallows;

And he shall be a beast of promise and a springing grain.

Shedding the child is an act of plenty

The womb full-eared, the excess of the year

And its coming again.

He came in a tent, he

Paddled in a boat, he

Went to the weir.

Who is he that came in a tent

And was known in the waters of the firmament?

Even he, the web of blood and flesh,

The small thing nestled in red,

Floating in the water of motherhead

In a bag of skin.

The beast shall leap aloud and shout

From rock to rock;

And this new grain shall be in ear

Before twelve year.

What is the sign that this shall be?

For life and death fall fatally.

The waters of the weir are dammed

But the falls flow on;

The sun dies and is eaten of Set

But there is a new sun.

The river cannot stop nor for long be stayed,

And its mighty fall

Is the descending of the milk of life,

Birth and succour of all.

December 5, 2012

HE WILL COME LIKE LAST LEAF’S FALL

Karen Webb posted this in ‘Contemplative Druidry’. It seemed like a natural contribution for passing on.

“This poem moved me to tears. We rarely speak of the Midwinter Born Child, though he or she appears in so many myths. Christianity is but one of those storylines. This is from Rowan Williams, a true Bard if ever I met one. And something to contemplate…

“He will come like last leaf’s fall.
One night when the November wind
has flayed the trees to bone, and earth

“wakes choking on the mould,
the soft shroud’s folding.

“He will come like the frost.
One morning when the shrinking earth
opens on mist, to find itself
arrested in the net
of alien, sword-set beauty.

“He will come like dark.
One evening when the bursting red
December sun draws up the sheet
and penny-masks its eye to yield
the star-snowed fields of sky.

“He will come, will come,
will come like crying in the night,
like blood, like breaking,
as the earth writhes to toss him free.
He will come like child.”

Contemplative Inquiry

Tag: Poetry

July 29, 2014