okay, 2 more Scotland poems
“Calton Hill, Beltane”
May Queen proud
reborn and mated
Green Man leaps
back to his feet.
Fires rekindled
by faith and imagination
breathe new life into
ancient tradtion.
Fires whirl
weilded by red men.
Blue men sway
before their Queen.
Fire eaters dance
devilish dervishes
mesmerizing
the joining crowd
while watchers sit
on the ruins, entranced
the shadows of pillars
stone trees like broken teeth
dancing around us
wavering in the light
of the Bel teinne need-fires
Ten thousand revelers watching
old customs return
Three by three by three
they turn the gyre
rebuild the fire.
Dance till dawn
in an excess of madness
coming in with spring
slaughter the wicker calf
on the cliffside
exploding over the rooftops below
in a shower of blessings
and fleas begone!
the Green Man leads
all maidens north
to Arthur’s Seat
to wash their faces
in morning dew.
Goddess bless
all you who remember
and try to return
to what She decreed.
***
“'Mine Old Romantic Towne'”
We were not welcome
where the pulsing light
of warning will-o-the-wisps floated
an too-easy name
for those restless spirits
I saw that night dancing
to chase us away;
we foolish revelers who thought
to spend the night in an uneasy yard
full of unnamed graves
tottering like rotten teeth
in mossy gums
one piled atop another, for centuries
rich and poor
plagued-ridden, died early
died young
no hopes, no dreams
all anger.
We should not have stayed.
And that one large cupola
which in the light of day seemed an object
of fantasy, a chamber
for the execution of vampires
staked out in the moving beam
of sun from a circular skylight
far overhead
was at night a tomb to flee
filled with echoing spirits.
The city filled
as you pass through the Old Town
with the hill-high lumps left behind
from the burials of the plague
still there to trod over
after nearly eight centuries.
The medical college
with its collections of
medieval instruments
full of ghosts
The catacombs beneath the city
the haunt of tourists on Sam'huinn
thinking it would be a Hallowe’en frolic
to walk the places
where the poor and deformed lived out their days
in dark and silence
beyond the Pale
where the line of the Flanders Wall
crossed the World’s End pub
and said, ‘keep out’.
May Queen proud
reborn and mated
Green Man leaps
back to his feet.
Fires rekindled
by faith and imagination
breathe new life into
ancient tradtion.
Fires whirl
weilded by red men.
Blue men sway
before their Queen.
Fire eaters dance
devilish dervishes
mesmerizing
the joining crowd
while watchers sit
on the ruins, entranced
the shadows of pillars
stone trees like broken teeth
dancing around us
wavering in the light
of the Bel teinne need-fires
Ten thousand revelers watching
old customs return
Three by three by three
they turn the gyre
rebuild the fire.
Dance till dawn
in an excess of madness
coming in with spring
slaughter the wicker calf
on the cliffside
exploding over the rooftops below
in a shower of blessings
and fleas begone!
the Green Man leads
all maidens north
to Arthur’s Seat
to wash their faces
in morning dew.
Goddess bless
all you who remember
and try to return
to what She decreed.
***
“'Mine Old Romantic Towne'”
We were not welcome
where the pulsing light
of warning will-o-the-wisps floated
an too-easy name
for those restless spirits
I saw that night dancing
to chase us away;
we foolish revelers who thought
to spend the night in an uneasy yard
full of unnamed graves
tottering like rotten teeth
in mossy gums
one piled atop another, for centuries
rich and poor
plagued-ridden, died early
died young
no hopes, no dreams
all anger.
We should not have stayed.
And that one large cupola
which in the light of day seemed an object
of fantasy, a chamber
for the execution of vampires
staked out in the moving beam
of sun from a circular skylight
far overhead
was at night a tomb to flee
filled with echoing spirits.
The city filled
as you pass through the Old Town
with the hill-high lumps left behind
from the burials of the plague
still there to trod over
after nearly eight centuries.
The medical college
with its collections of
medieval instruments
full of ghosts
The catacombs beneath the city
the haunt of tourists on Sam'huinn
thinking it would be a Hallowe’en frolic
to walk the places
where the poor and deformed lived out their days
in dark and silence
beyond the Pale
where the line of the Flanders Wall
crossed the World’s End pub
and said, ‘keep out’.