The Lament of the Oak

The lament of the Oak


(Bird song can be heard)

Listen, can you hear that?
That sound celebrating the new day
Once fill all my waking moments.

That song heralding the end of a long night
Sung to the open air to where the sound would stretch out,
And gently fall to earth like the downward spiral
Of a sycamore wing.

The Spring saw my tree feathers unfurl
And Summer bore throughout the forest a rich store of fruit and berries
For the seed-thief to plunder, and enrich its song.
I was moved in my surroundings, a part of everything that grew
I was blessed by the sunlight that reached out
Touching the forest floor with a quiet ecstasy,
And in such moments I would remember what the Ancestors had said:

Once, when the trees of Holmwudu
Were at rest inside the forest
A light appeared above them in the air
It penetrated deep below the canopy
And hooked itself to their roots, alighting in a clearing.
A presence rippled in the undergrowth
And the trees struggled to comprehend it.
‘This light is surly our salvation’
The mighty oak then said ‘We should yield’, so they did,
The light space remained and the presence passed over
And out of the mystery that couldn’t contain it.

I managed to survive the Great Storm and in times of short water
Learned to conserve my energy. But when a dark cloud
Came to rest above my crown the birds took flight.
Then a searing pain struck me like Winter.
I felt the surrounding meadow lean in and press the air, heavily.
I could smell the earth. I felt the void where my roots had clung to the soil.
A wide gap in the sky had opened and was funnelling blackened air.
I shuddered and I bore my silver-leaf underside to invoke the rain.


When I awoke I felt a warmth
And a breeze, a breathing
From one who held me in his hand
He had a knife and with it he was whittling, carving, quietly.
And as I began to take shape
I began to resemble the one-who-carved.
Heavy was he in thought as if the trunk of the mighty oak itself
Lay across his shoulders. Was that why in me
He carved the image of himself
With eyes closed?

And the more he carved the more
He began talking to me, and I heard words like, 'friend'
And since he understood my longing
To return to the wood he gave me back
My two outstretched branches with their 5 slender twigs
And I began to hope that the birds would come back
To nest in my arms.

But, for a long time I was held in a long lasting night.
I was pale, I was cold, I was shivering.
Then I heard noises
But nothing of the like that I had heard in the forest, but gradually they
Became louder until suddenly
I was overwhelmed by a great gust of wind
Like that of the night of the Great Storm.
I tried to let my branches be carried along
But I saw that my limbs had been
fastened with great thorns.
I was surrounded. Surrounded by a plague of shouting
And jeering in a language I did not understand.
They hoisted me up above their heads and a light blinded.
I was spun around, disorientated.
I wanted to cry out but without the leaves I had no voice
And had I cried out who would have understood my voice?

I felt at that moment a visitation of all the evil of the world
beyond the forest. And beyond that instead of trees, people
A crowd, surging and swelling like the Great river
They looked at me. They looked into this face
That the one-who-carved had given me
And they tried to find themselves reflected in this face
And leaning forward, they outstretched their arms like branches
To touch me and force upon me their vision
But it was a vision not of my world,

It was a vision of such horror, of fire and flames.
I could see their suffering, their jealousy, their vanity,
I saw how they cheated and deceived one another
Corrupted anything that was treasured
Yet through that pain they sought to find in me salvation,
And then they began pleading with me.
And I heard words like, 'father',
And then I saw myself in that vision
And they told me that I was the source
Of all wisdom and knowledge
And I began to lament
How we had become estranged.
I wanted to cry out,
'You people have brought this all upon yourselves.'
I wanted to tell them
'Look into your own heart.'
It cannot be made of stone.

And then as if far off rising above the cacophony
The song of the seed-thief returned
But this time it wasn't just the one voice, but many
And the many voices were singing together.
And they were singing together
As if they were singing as one.





Fourth version

Four Anglo-Saxon Poems

Four Anglo-Saxon Poems


Through Anglo-Saxon verse we ascend to the source of the English language where words are rooted in things and full of meaning...perhaps more so.

These poems were inspired by the Anglo-Saxon sense of playfulness, found particularly in the surviving riddles, and exploit a variety of end and internal rhymes to create cycles of repeated sounds around a collection of concrete images



Poem I

The wood some trees
As well as these

A well, a wood
As well they would

The wood as well
As the trees


Poem II

On the brow of a clough
Sits a chough on a bough

Three brothers in a rough
Take turns at the plough

A boat on the lough
Is lost in a trough

And the sough of the wind
Is more than, more than enough


Poem III

The wild wind wanders
Round the old wintery wood

Wondering whether
It would waken the weather

Winding its windy fingers
Round the old wold world


Poem IV

The field leaves its yield
To the breeze in the trees

And the hedge at the edge
Yields to the leaves

In the heart of that hedge
By the edge of the wood

A fledgling sings, concealed
While a herd in a field

Lifts its head
To a bird on the wing

That heard nothing
But could, see everything

* * * * *

Poem II Glossary and pronunciation guide

Brow: \ˈbrau̇\ before 12th century, the projecting upper part of a steep place
Bough: \ˈbau̇\ before 12th century, a branch of a tree
Plough : \ˈplau̇\ 12th century, an implement used to cut, lift, and turn over soil.
Sough: \ˈsau̇ before 12th century, to make a moaning or sighing sound


Clough: \ˈkləf\ Dialect a gorge or narrow ravine
Chough: \ˈchəf\, Date: 13th century, an Old World bird related to crows
Rough: \ˈrəf\ Date: before 12th century
Enough: \i-ˈnəf, before 12th century

*Lough: \ˈläk, ˈläḵ\ 14th century of Celtic origin; akin to Old Irish loch lake
Trough: \ˈtrȯf before 12th century : a depression (as between waves or hills)

*Clearly not Saxon in origin

Kolinje - the slaughter of the pig

Pig hangs by its hind legs splayed out
on a wide frame. A single slit splits the
underbelly open, opening up to the
outside its warm, steaming interior all
reds and succulent, shining and wet
spilling out into well versed hands
cutting and carving, weaving a polished
tip between bone and cartilage severing
stretched tendons with a snap and
paring flesh from fat. All is carefully
sorted and dispatched, just a small
sack of bitter, black fluid is discarded.
By the end only a suggestion of pig
remains, recognisable, its tail uncoiled
and pale.

from FIELD SONGS

Field Songs, parts VI & VII

VI

More sky appears (Still so warm)
Between each limb (I could be deceived)
As trees cast into the wind
Their bronzed, autumnal leaves (For thinking it is spring)
Edged in burning red
And black decay
Colours almost singed (Colours changing)
For want of cooler days.
From their summer greens.
Rich mossy greens
And blue tinted lichens
Vibrant shades
Of ochres and orange
The season’s
Wind-blown wreckage
Remains. (Remains of leaves)
(Lie scattered in drifts.)
Ankle deep mounds of (Ankle deep mounds lie)
Lobed edges oak, (Under the oaks)
Serrated lime (And the limes.)
And smooth walnut
All long abandoned
By their branches.

I’ll take a rake (I’ll take a rake)
To tidy up (And sweep them up)
And burn them (And burn them)
Scenting the air (Filling the air)
(With plumes of)
(Brilliant white smoke)
With that acrid smell
(In an otherwise)
(Flawless sky.)
That is autumn.



VII

The fires are lit
And the fields glow

The evening sun (The labouring men)
Brightens the wall (Work in silence)
(In their unfenced acreage)

In the room (Burning stubble)
(Each in his field)
Where the colour (Where the slow wound)
Deepens (Deepens)
(And the blood)
To a crimson.
(Stiffens in the veins.)
The floor boards (The earth con-
Creak underfoot -tracks underfoot)

Unsettling the dust.
Viewed from the window
The folds in the valley
Open like a book
(Breaking the spine.)
Where the unwritten lines
Linger in the wood smoke
Hanging in horizontal layers.

A sapling senses the end of Summer

I



These beaded threads of morning moisture
Stretched across our hardening antlers
Come upon us in our sleep and we seem to be sleeping longer,
Longer since our leaves have left us.

Heavy in the dark they become lighter as the light up-rises.
This binding silk is not bondage to us
But through it we detect little tremors in all our parts.
When that happens it is like the wind but not the wind

But like the wind it stirs us from our light-green reveries
Since we know that sound of something airborne all too well.
It has been around us, everywhere, while it has been warm.
A kind of singing that is not singing, just coming and going,

And sometimes we feel the sensation of a sudden shudder
Which shakes these sparkling crystals and then the singing stops And while they fall there is a moment of silence
That is taut and tense in which we wait to hear them shatter.

The Clerks' Well, Clerkenwell, London

The Clerks' Well, Clerkenwell (in memory of Jane Wisner)

Rest a while, traveller
And imbibe at this well

Present long before any human presence
Sought to haul me up
From a hole, deeply bored
In the ground, I lay undiscovered

Until a fissure cracked the earth
And sent me rippling out over bright stones.
Since when I became sacred, appropriated
And around me all life congregated.

There wasn't a time when I didn't exist.
I came into being at the very beginning
And my molecules still carry the memory
Of that moment across the whole globe.

I am that cloud caught drifting
Across the plains of Tanzanier.
I am crystallized in the frozen wastes
Of the Tundra

I hang in the misty humidity
Of the Rain Forest. Irrigate
The tea hills of the Himalayas.
Plash in a fountain in Tivoli.

I have quenched the thirst of a goatherd
And trickled down the face of the one
Who had dug this well.
This well, where all these waters coalesce

Around which the whole world pivots
Will be remembered, well.


1st version

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