Month: August 2007

A rather large entry…. The first part touches on our son Rowan…
On The Menu:

Michael Stearns – Planetary Unfolding

Witches and Wizards and Irish Folk-Lore (W.B. Yeats)

Poetry: Year Of The Goddess (Uttering Her Name)- Part 2

Nemezis – Species

Art: From Australia – Deirdre O’Reilly
I hope you like this edition….. Gwyllm

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Yesterday (the 8th of August) was Rowan’s 17th Birthday! He has been studying at the Ashland Shakespearean Festival for the last week and a half. The house has been unusually quiet since he has been gone!
I had a phone call from him today, and he is doing quite well. He has been up at 5:30 daily (a first) and going to midnight every day pretty much. He told me about the performances that he has attended, and he is brimming over with enthusiasm about the new skills he is learning. He picked up a new script from one of the plays, and I get a sneaking suspicion that he may be directing it for his senior project…
Here he is last month with Dale Pendell at dinner… A wonderful night of conversations!

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MICHAEL STEARNS – PLANETARY UNFOLDING

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Witches and Wizards and Irish Folk-Lore (W.B. Yeats)
Ireland was not separated from general European speculation when much of that was concerned with the supernatural. Dr. Adam Clarke tells in his unfinished autobiography how) when he was at school in Antrim towards the end of the eighteenth century, a schoolfellow told him of Cornelius Agrippa’s book on Magic and that it had to be chained or it would fly away of itself. Presently he heard of a farmer who had a copy and after that made friends with a wandering tinker who had another. Lady Gregory and I spoke of a friend’s visions to an old countryman. He said “he must belong to a society”; and the people often attribute magical powers to Orangemen and to Freemasons, and I have heard a shepherd at Doneraile speak of a magic wand with Tetragramaton Agla written upon it. The visions and speculations of Ireland differ much from those of England and France, for in Ireland, as in Highland Scotland, we are never far from the old Celtic mythology; but there is more likeness than difference. Lady Gregory’s story of the witch who in semblance of a hare, leads the hounds such a dance, is the best remembered of all witch stories. It is told, I should imagine, in every countryside where there is even a fading memory of witchcraft. One finds it in a sworn testimony given at the trial of Julian Cox, an old woman indicted for witchcraft at Taunton in Somersetshire in 1663 and quoted by Joseph Glanvill. “The first witness was a huntsman, who swore that he went out with a pack of hounds to hunt a hare, and not far from Julian Cox her house he at last started a hare: the dogs hunted her very close, and the third ring hunted her in view, till at last the huntsman perceiving the hare almost spent and making towards a great bush, he ran on the other side of the bush to take her up and preserve her from the dogs; but as soon as he laid hands on her, it proved to be Julian Cox, who had her head grovelling on the ground, and her globes (as he expressed it) upward. He knowing her, was so affrighted that his hair on his head stood on end; and yet spake to her, and ask’d her what brought her there; but she was so far out of breath that she could not make him any answer; his dogs also came up full cry to recover the game, and smelled at her and so left off hunting any further. And the huntsman with his dogs went home presently sadly affrighted.” Dr. Henry More, the Platonist, who considers the story in a letter to Glanvill, explains that Julian Cox was not turned into a hare, but that “Ludicrous Daemons exhibited to the sight of this huntsman and his dogs, the shape of a hare, one of them turning himself into such a form, another hurrying on the body of Julian near the same place,” making her invisible till the right moment had come. “As I have heard of some painters that have drawn the sky in a huge landscape, so lively, that the birds have flown against it, thinking it free air, and so have fallen down. And if painters and jugglers, by the tricks of legerdemain can do such strange feats to the deceiving of the sight, it is no wonder that these aerie invisible spirits have far surpassed them in all such prestigious doings, as the air surpasses the earth for subtlety.” Glanvill has given his own explanation of such cases elsewhere. He thinks that the sidereal or airy body is the foundation of the marvel, and Albert de Rochas has found a like foundation for the marvels of spiritism. “The transformation of witches,” writes Glanvill, “into the shapes of other animals … is very conceivable; since then, ’tis easy enough to imagine that the power of imagination may form those passive and pliable vehicles into those shapes,” and then goes on to account for the stories where an injury, say to the witch hare. is found afterwards upon the witch’s body precisely as a French hypnotist would account for the stigmata of a saint. “When they feel the hurts in their gross bodies, that they receive in their airy vehicles, they must be supposed to have been really present, at least in these latter, and ’tis no more difficult to apprehend, how the hurts of those should be translated upon their other bodies, than how diseases should be inflicted by the imagination, or how the fancy of the mother should wound the foettis, as several credible relations do attest.”
All magical or Platonic writers of the times speak much of the transformation or projection of the sidereal body of witch or wizard. Once the soul escapes from the natural body, though but for a moment, it passes into the body of air and can transform itself as it please or even dream itself into some shape it has not willed.
“Chameleon-like thus they their colour change,

And size contract and then dilate again.”
One of their favourite stories is of some famous man, John Haydon says Socrates, falling asleep among his friends, who presently see a mouse running from his mouth and towards a little stream. Somebody lays a sword across the stream that it may pass, and after a little while it returns across the sword and to the sleeper’s mouth again. When he awakes he tells them that he has dreamed of himself crossing a wide river by a great iron bridge.
But the witch’s wandering and disguised double was not the worst shape one might meet in the fields or roads about a witch’s house. She was not a true witch unless there was a compact (or so it seems) between her and an evil spirit who called himself the devil, though Bodin believes that he was often, and Glanvill always, “some human soul forsaken of God,” for “the devil is a body politic.” The ghost or devil promised revenge on her enemies and that she would never want, and she upon her side let the devil suck her blood nightly or at need.
When Elizabeth Style made a confession of witchcraft before the Justice of Somerset in 1664, the Justice appointed three men, William Thick and William Read and Nicholas Lambert, to watch her, and Glanvill publishes an affidavit of the evidence of Nicholas Lambert. “About three of the clock in the morning there came from her head a glistering bright fly, about an inch in length which pitched at first in the chimney and then vanished.” Then two smaller flies came and vanished. “H; looking steadfastly then on Style, perceived her countenance to change, and to become very black and ghastly and the fire also at the same time changing its colour; whereupon the Examinant, Thick and Read, conceiving that her familiar was then about her, looked to her poll, and seeing her hair shake very strangely, took it up and then a fly like a great miller flew out from the place and pitched on the table board and then vanished away. Upon this the Examinant and the other two persons, looking again in Style’s poll found it very red and like raw beef. The Examinant ask’d her what it was that went out of her poll, she said it was a butterfly, and asked them why they had not caught it. Lambert said, they could not. I think so too, answered she. A little while after the informant and the others, looking again into her poll found the place to be of its former colour. The Examinant asked again what the fly was, she confessed it was her familiar and that she felt it tickle in her poll, and that was the usual time for her familiar to come to her.” These sucking devils alike when at their meal, or when they went here and there to do her will or about their own business, had the shapes of pole-cat or cat or greyhound or of some moth or bird. At the trials of certain witches in Essex in 1645 reported in the English state trials a principal witness was one “Matthew Hopkins, gent.” Bishop Hutchinson, writing in 1730, describes him as he appeared to those who laughed at witchcraft and had brought the witch trials to an end. “Hopkins went on searching and swimming poor creatures till some gentlemen, out of indignation of the barbarity, took him, and tied his own thumbs and toes as he used to tie others, and when he was put into the water he himself swam as they did. That cleared the country of him and it was a great pity that they did not think of the experiment sooner.” Floating when thrown into the water was taken for a sign of witchcraft. Matthew Hopkins’s testimony, however, is uncommonly like that of the countryman who told Lady Gregory that he had seen his dog and some shadow fighting. A certain Mrs. Edwards of Manintree in Essex had her hogs killed by witchcraft, and “going from the house of the said Mrs. Edwards to his own house, about nine or ten of the clock that night, with his greyhound with him, he saw the greyhound suddenly give a jump, and run as she had been in full course after a hare; and that when this informant made haste to see what his greyhound so eagerly pursued, he espied a white thing, about the bigness of a kitlyn, and the greyhound standing aloof from it; and that by and by the said white imp or kitlyn danced about the grey-hound, and by all likelihood bit off a piece of the flesh of the shoulder of the said greyhound; for the greyhound came shrieking and crying to the informant, with a piece of flesh torn from her shoulder. And the informant further saith, that coming into his own yard that night, he espied a black thing proportioned like a cat, only it was thrice as big, sitting on a strawberry bed, and fixing the eyes on this informant, and when he went to-wards it, it leaped over the pale towards this informant, as he thought, but ran through the yard, with his greyhound after it, to a great gate, which was underset with a pair of tumble strings, and did throw the said gate wide open, and then vanished; and ‘he said greyhound returned again to this informant, shaking and trembling exceedingly.” At the same trial Sir Thomas Bowes, Knight, affirmed “that a very honest man of Manintree, whom he knew would not speak an untruth affirmed unto him, ‘hat very early one morning, as he passed by the said Anne West’s door” (this is the witch on trial) “about four o’clock, it being a moonlight night, and perceiving her door to be open so early in the morning, looked into the house and presently there came three or four little things, in the shape of black rabbits, leaping and skipping about him, who, having a good stick in his hand, struck at them, thinking to kill them, but could not; but at last caught one of them in his hand, and holding it by the body of it, he beat the head of it against his stick, intending to beat out the brains of it; but when he could not kill it that way, he took the body of it in one hand and the head of it in another, and endeavoured to wring off the head; and as he wrung and stretched the neck of it, it came out between his hands like a lock of wool; yet he would not give over his intended purpose, but knowing of a spring not far off, he went to drown it; but still as he went he fell down and could not go, but down he fell again, so that he at last crept upon his hands and knees till he came at the water, and holding it fast in his hand, he put his hand down into the water up to the elbow, and held it under water a good space till he conceived it was drowned, and then letting go his hand, it sprung out of the water up into the air, and so vanished away.” However, the sucking imps were not always invulnerable for Glanvill tells how one John Monpesson, whose house was haunted by such a familiar, “seeing some wood move that was in the chimney of a room, where he was, as if of itself, discharged a pistol into it after which they found several drops of blood on the hearth and in divers places of the stairs.” I remember the old Aran man who heard fighting in the air and found blood in a fish-box and scattered through the room, and I remember the measure of blood Odysseus poured out for the shades.
The English witch trials are like the popular poetry of England, matter-of-fact and unimaginative. The witch desires to kill some one and when she takes the devil for her husband he as likely as not will seem dull and domestic. Rebecca West told Matthew Hopkins that the devil appeared to her as she was going to bed and told her he would marry her. He kissed her but was as cold as clay, and he promised to be “her loving husband till death,” although she had, as it seems, but one leg. But the Scotch trials are as wild and passionate as is the Scottish poetry, and we find ourselves in the presence of a mythology that differs little, if at all, from that of Ireland. There are orgies of lust and of hatred and there is a wild shamelessness that would be fine material for poets and romance writers if the world should come once more to half-believe the tale. They are divided into troops of thirteen, with the youngest
witch for leader in every troop, and though they complain that the embraces of the devil are as cold as ice, the young witches prefer him to their husbands. He gives them money, but they must spend it quickly, for it will be but dry cow dung in two circles of the clock. They go often to Elfhame or Faeryland and the mountains open before them and as they go out and in they are terrified by the “rowtling and skoylling” of the great “elf bulls.” They sometimes confess to trooping in the shape of cats and to finding upon their terrestrial bodies when they awake in the morning the scratches they had made upon one another in the night’s wandering, or should they have wandered in the images of hares the bites of dogs. Isobell Godie who was tried at Loclilay in 1662 confessed that “We put besoms in our beds with our husbands till we return again to them… and then we would fly away where we would be, even as straws would fly upon a highway. We will fly like straws when we please; wild straws and corn straws will be horses to us, and we put them betwixt our feet and say horse and hillock in the devil’s name. And when any see these straws in a whirlwind and do not sanctify themselves, we may shoot them dead at our pleasure.” When they kill people, she goes on to say, the souls escape them “but their bodies remain with us and will fly as horses to us all as small as straws.” It is plain that it is the “airy body” they take possession of; those “animal spirits” perhaps which Henry More thought to be the link between soul and body and the seat of all vital function. The trials were more unjust than those of England, where there was a continual criticism from sceptics; torture was used again and again to distort confessions, and innocent people certainly suffered; some who had but believed too much in their own dreams and some who had but cured the sick at some vision’s prompting. Alison Pearson who was burnt in 1588 might have been Biddy Early or any other knowledge-able woman in Ireland today. She was convicted “for haunting and repairing with the Good Neighbours and queen of Elfhame, these divers years and bypast, as she had confessed in her depositions, declaring that she could not say readily how long She was with them; and that she had friends in that court who were of her own blood and who had great acquaintance of the queen of Elfhame. That when she went to bed she never knew where she would be carried before dawn.” When they worked cures they had the same doctrine of the penalty that one finds in Lady Gregory’s stories. One who made her confession before James I. was convicted for “taking the sick party’s pains and sicknesses upon herself for a time and then translating them to a third person.”
II
There are more women than men mediums today; and there have been or seem to have been more witches than wizards. The wizards of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries relied more upon their conjuring book than the witches whose visions and experiences seem but half voluntary, and when voluntary called up by some childish rhyme:
Hare, hare, God send thee care;

I am in a hare’s likeness now,

But I shall be a woman even now;

Hare, hare, God send thee care.
More often than not the wizards were learned men, alchemists or mystics, and if they dealt with the devil at times, or some spirit they called by that name, they had amongst them ascetics and heretical saints. Our chemistry, our metallurgy, and our medicine are often but accidents that befell in their pursuit or the philosopher’s stone, the elixir of life. They were bound together in secret societies and had, it may be, some forgotten practice for liberating the soul from the body and sending it to fetch and carry them divine knowledge. Cornelius Agrippa in a letter quoted by Beaumont, has hints of such a practice. Yet like the witches, they worked many wonders by the power of the imagination, perhaps one should say by their power of up vivid pictures in the mind’s eye. The Arabian philosophers have taught, writes Beaumont, “that the soul by the power the imagination can perform what it pleases; as penetrate heavens, force the elements, demolish mountains, raise valleys to mountains, and do with all material forms as it pleases.”
He shewed hym, er he wente to sopeer,

Pores tes, parkes ful of wilde deer;

Ther saugh he hertes with hir hornes hye,

The gretteste that evere were seyn with ye.
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Tho saugh he knyghtes justing in a playn;

And after this, he dide hym swich plaisaunce,

That he hym shewed his lady on a daunce

On which hymself he daunced, as hym thoughte.

And whan this maister, that this magyk wroughte,

Saugh it was tyme, he clapte his handes two,

And, farewel! al our revel was ago.
One has not as careful a record as one has of the works of witches, for but few English wizards came before the court, the only society for psychical research in those days. The translation, however, of Cornelius Agrippa’s De Occulta Philosophia in the seventeenth century, with the addition of a spurious fourth book full of conjurations, seems to have filled England and Ireland with whole or half wizards. In 1703, the Reverend Arthur Bedford of Bristol, who is quoted by Sibley in his big book on astrology, wrote to the Bishop of Gloucester telling how a certain Thomas Perks had been to consult him. Thomas Perks lived with his father, a gunsmith, and devoted his leisure to mathematics, astronomy, and the discovery of perpetual motion. One day he asked the clergyman if it was wrong to commune with spirits, and said that he himself held that “there was an innocent society with them which a man might use, if he made no compacts with them, did no harm by their means, and were not curious in prying into hidden things, and he himself had discoursed with them and heard them sing to his great satisfaction.” He then told how it was his custom to go to a crossway with lantern and candle consecrated for the purpose, according to the directions in a book he had, and having also consecrated chalk for making a circle. The spirits appeared to him “in the likeness of little maidens about a foot and a half high … they spoke with a very shrill voice like an ancient woman” and when he begged them to sing, “they went to some distance behind a bush from whence he could hear a perfect concert of such exquisite music as he never before heard; and in the upper part he heard something very harsh and shrill like a reed but as it was managed did give a particular grace to the rest.” The Reverend Arthur Bedford refused an introduction to the spirits for himself and a friend and warned him very solemnly. Having some doubt of his sanity, he set him a difficult mathematical problem, but finding that he worked it easily, concluded him sane. A quarter of a year later the young man came again, but showed by his face and his eyes that he was very ill and lamented that he had not followed the clergyman’s advice for his conjurations would bring him to his death. He had decided to get a familiar and had read in his magical book what he should do. He was to make a book of virgin parchment, consecrate it, and bring it to the cross-road, and having called up his spirits, ask the first of them for its name and write that name on the first page of the book and then question another and write that name on the second page and so on till he had enough familiars. He had got the first name easily enough and it was in Hebrew, but after that they came in fearful shapes, lions and bears and the like, or hurled at him halls of fire. He had to stay there among those terrifying visions till the dawn broke and would not be the better of it till he died. I have read in some eighteenth century book whose name I cannot recall of two men who made a magic circle and who invoked the spirits of the moon and saw them trampling about the circle as great bulls, or rolling about it as flocks of wool. One of Lady Gregory’s story-tellers considered a flock of wool one of the worst shapes that a spirit could take.
There must have been many like experimenters in Ireland. An Irish alchemist called Butler was supposed to have made successful transmutations in London early in the eighteenth century, and in the Life of Dr. Adam Clarke, published in 1833, are several letters from a Dublin maker of stained glass describing a transmutation and a conjuration into a tumbler of water of large lizards. The alchemist was an unknown man who had called to see him and claimed to do all by the help of the devil “who was the friend of all ingenious gentlemen.”

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Year Of The Goddess (Uttering Her Name)- Part 2
(8) Barefoot
Tá an ghealach ina luí ar a droim

Glan ar meisce

Coimeádann sí na héin ina ndúiseacht

I dteanga iasachta atá a ngiob geab

Sníonn abhainn airgeadúil in aghaidh na fána,

Iompraíonn scáil na sceiche gile léi,

Taoi amuigh ag siúl, ní foláir, cosnochta
The moon lies on her back

Mad drunk

Keeping the birds awake

They chat in a foreign tongue

A silvery river flows up the slope

Bearing with it the reflection of a fairy bush

You must be out walking, in Your bare feet

—
(9) Snow on the foothills
Nuair a leánn sneachta na mbunchnoc

Fanann Do ghile linn

Ní istigh ná lasmuigh Duit

Ach i ngach cearn den chruinne

Is i mbólaí nár aimsíodh fós
When the snow of the foothills vanishes

Your brightness stays

Neither inside nor outside are You

But in all the universe

And expanses not yet known

—
(10) She
Ise

Mise

Mise

Ise

She

me

me

She

—
(11) Your nakedness
Chomh geal sin

Nach gcorraíonn suáilce ná duáilce ionam
Sea, Taoi nocht os mo chomhair

Ach nach bhfuil an féar nocht?

Tá an ghealach nocht

Nocht atá an drúcht

Is ní siocair pheaca dom iad.

Tusa nár pheacaigh riamh! A ghile!

Conas a pheacóinnse?
So bright

Neither virtue nor vice stirs in me
Yes, You stand naked before me

But is the grass not naked?

The moon is naked

Naked the dew

They are not occasions of sin.

You who never sinned! Bright being!

How could I?

—
(12) April Gusts
Beireann Tú orm.

Mothallaíonn Tú mé.

Analaíonn Tú tríom.
You catch me.

You tousle me.

Breathe through me.

—
(13) Spring Showers
Táim im líbín Agat.

Ar maos Ionat.

Ní bhead im ghaineamhlach

Go deo arís.
You have drowned me.

I am awash in You.

Never again

Will I be a desert.

—
(14) Your summer
Ní sheasfad é

Ní sheasfad do shamhradhsa

Dófar m’inchinn

Ina gualach dubh

Chun portráid Díot a bhreacadh
I won’t be able for it

I won’t be able for Your summer

My brains will fry

Will turn to charcoal

To sketch Your portrait

—
(15) Miracle
Ba mhór an mhíorúilt í.

Bhís le clos go soiléir

Im choiscéimeanna

Bhís le feiscint

I m’anáil
It was a great miracle.

You were heard clearly

In my footsteps

You were visible

In my breath

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Gabriel Rosenstock

is the author/translator of over 100 books, including 12 volumes of poetry in Irish and a number of volumes of bilingual haiku. A member of Aosdana, the Irish Academy of Arts and Letters, he has given readings in Europe, the US, India, Australia and Japan. He has translated into Irish the selected poems of, among others, Francisco X. Alarcon, S. Heaney, G. Grass, W M Roggeman, Said, M. Augustin, P. Huchel, G. Trakl, G. Heym, H. Schertenleib and his Irish-language versions of haiku masters Issa, Buson, Shiki, Santoka and others are much loved in his native country.
The selections form Uttering Her Name are addressed to Dar Óma, a Celtic goddess, daughter of OGHMA who gave the gift of writing to the Celts. The communication to Dar Óma at times seems addressed an impersonal God and, at others, to someone immediate, felt, touched. Gabriel Rosenstock describes the work as neo-bhakti and, indeed, it has a strong feel of some of the great bhakti poetry, like that of Mirabai.

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Nemezis – Species

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Ah dear Ones….
I have been jammed entirely trying to get things in place for the coming days… Dealing with customers, and working straight through the weekend. Turfing has taken the back burner to a degree for the first time in 2 1/2 years, and it has been a grief for me that I have not been as present… Editing the magazine, jumping through hoops…
Please check out one of my latest pieces on:

West Cork Writers: Tantric Gymnast…
But, and I say BUT…. here are a few exceptional bits for you.

On The Menu:

The Unquiet Dead

The Poetry Of Gabriel Rosenstock… (Gaelic With English Translations…)

Tales Of Brave Ulysses

Art: From Australia – Deirdre O’Reilly (originally from Belfast….)
That is it my lovelies… more soon, I promise!
Gwyllm

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The Unquiet Dead

-Lady Gregory

A good many years ago when I was but beginning my study of the folk-lore of belief, I wrote somewhere that if by an impossible miracle every trace and memory of Christianity could be swept out of the world, it would not shake or destroy at all the belief of the people of Ireland in the invisible world, the cloud of witnesses, in immortality and the life to come. For them the veil between things seen and unseen has hardly thickened since those early days of the world when the sons of God mated with the daughters of men; when angels spoke with Abraham in Hebron or with Columcille in the oakwoods of Derry, or when as an old man at my own gate told me they came and visited the Fianna, the old heroes of Ireland, “because they were so nice and so respectable.” Ireland has through the centuries kept continuity of vision, the vision it is likely all nations possessed in the early days of faith. Here in Connacht there is no doubt as to the continuance of life after death. The spirit wanders for a while in that intermediate region to which mystics and theologians have given various names, and should it return and become visible those who loved it will not be afraid, but will, as I have already told, put a light in the window to guide the mother home to her child, or go out into the barley gardens in the hope of meeting a son. And if the message brought seems hardly worth the hearing, we may call to mind what Frederic Myers wrote of more instructed ghosts:
“If it was absurd to listen to Kepler because he bade the planets move in no perfect circles but in undignified ellipses, because he hastened and slackened from hour to hour what ought to be a heavenly body’s ideal and unwavering speed; is it not absurder still to refuse to listen to these voices from afar, because they come stammering and wandering as in a dream confusedly instead of with a trumpet’s call? Because spirits that bending to earth may undergo perhaps an earthly bewilderment and suffer unknown limitations, and half remember and hall forget?”
And should they give the message more clearly who knows if it would be welcome? For the old Scotch story goes that when S. Columcille’s brother Dobhran rose up from his grave and said, “Hell is not so bad as people say,” the Saint cried out, “Clay, clay on Dobhran!” before he could tell any more.
I was told by Mrs. Dennehy:
Those that mind the teaching of the clergy say the dead go to Limbo first and then to Purgatory and then to hell or to heaven. Hell is always burning and if you go there you never get out; but these that mind the old people don’t believe, and I don’t believe, that there is any hell. I don’t believe God Almighty would make Christians to put them into hell afterwards.
It is what the old people say, that after death the shadow goes wandering, and the soul is weak, and the body is taking a rest. The shadow wanders for a while and it pays the debts it had to pay, and when it is free it puts out wings and flies to Heaven.
An Aran Man:
There was an old man died, and after three days he appeared in the cradle as a baby; they knew him by an old look in his face, and his face being long and other things. An old woman that came into the house saw him, and she said, “He won’t be with you long, he had three deaths to die, and this is the second,” and sure enough he died at the end of six years.
Mrs. Martin:
There was a man beyond when I lived at Ballybron, and it was said of him that he was taken away-up before God Almighty. But the blessed Mother asked for grace for him for a year and a day. So he got it. I seen him myself, and many seen him, and at the end of the year and a day he died. And that man ought to be happy now anyway. When my own poor little girl was drowned in the well, I never could sleep but fretting, fretting, fretting. But one day when one of my little boys was taking his turn to serve the Mass he stopped on his knees without getting up. And Father Boyle asked him what did he see and he looking up. And he told him that he could see his little sister in the presence of God, and she shining like the sun. Sure enough that was a vision He had sent to comfort us. So from that day I never cried nor fretted any more.
A Herd:
Do you believe Roland Joyce was seen? Well, he was. A man I know told me he saw him the night of his death, in Esserkelly where he had a farm, and a man along with him going through the stock. And all of a sudden a train came into the field, and brought them both away like a blast of wind.
And as for old Parsons Persse of Castleboy, there’s thousands of people has seen him hunting at night with his horses and his hounds and his bugle blowing. There’s no mistake at all about him being there.
An Aran Woman:
There was a girl in the middle island had died, and when she was being washed, and a priest in the house, there flew by the window the whitest bird that ever was seen. And the priest said to the father: “Do not lament, unless what you like, your child’s happy for ever!”
Mrs. Casey:
Near the strand there were two little girls went out to gather cow-dung. And they sat down beside a bush to rest themselves, and there they heard a groan Corning from under the ground. So they ran home as fast as they could. And they were told when they went again to bring a man with them.
So the next time they went they brought a man with them, and they hadn’t been sitting there long when they heard the saddest groan that ever you heard. So the man bent down and asked what was it. And a voice from below said, “Let some one shave me and get me out of this, for I was never shaved after dying.” So the man went away, and the next day he brought soap and all that was needful and there he found a body lying laid out on the grass. So he shaved it, and with that wings came and carried it up to high heaven.
A Chimney-sweep:
I don’t believe in all I hear, or I’d believe in ghosts and faeries, with all the old people telling you stories about them and the priests believing in them too. Surely the priests believe in ghosts, and tell you that they are souls that died in trouble. But I have been about the country night and day, and I remember when I used to have to put my hand out at the top of every chimney in Coole House; and I seen or felt nothing to frighten me, except one night two rats caught in a trap at Roxborough; and the old butler came down and beat me with a belt for the scream I gave at that. But if I believed in any one coming back, it would be in what you often hear, of a mother coming back to care for her child.
And there’s many would tell you that every time you see a tree shaking there’s a ghost in it
Old Lambert of Dangan was a terror for telling stories; he told me long ago how he was near the Piper’s gap on Ballybrit racecourse, and he saw one riding to meet him, and it was old Michael Lynch of Ballybrista, that was dead long before, and he never would go on the racecourse again. And he had heard the car with headless horses driving through Loughrea. From every part they are said to drive, and the place they are all going to is Benmore, near Loughrea, where there is a ruined dwelling-house and an old forth. And at Mount Mahon a herd told me the other day he often saw old Andrew Mahon riding about at night. But if I was a herd and saw that I’d hold my tongue about it.
Mrs. Casey:
At the graveyard of Drumacoo often spirits do he seen. Old George Fitzgerald is seen by many. And when they go up to the stone he’s sitting on, he’ll be sitting somewhere else.
There was a man walking in the wood near there, and he met a woman, a stranger, and he said “Is there anything I can do for you?” For he thought she was
some countrywoman gone astray. “There is,” says she. “Then come home with me,” says he, “and tell me about it.” “I can’t do that,” says she, “but what you can do is this, go tell my friends I’m in great trouble, for twenty times in my life I missed going to church, and they must say twenty Masses for me now to deliver me, but they seem to have forgotten me. And another thing is,” says she, “there’s some small debts I left and they’re not paid, and those are helping to keep me in trouble.” Well. the man went on and he didn’t know what in the world to do, for he couldn’t know who she was, for they are not permitted to tell their name. But going about visiting at country houses he used to tell the story, and at last it came out she was one of the Shannons. For at a house he was telling it at they remembered that an old woman thev had. died a year ago, and that she used to be running un little debts unknown to them. So they made inquiry at Findlater’s and at another shop that’s done away with now, and they found tnat sure enough she had left some small debts, not more than ten shillings in each, and when she died no more had been said about it. So they paid these and said the Masses, and shortly after she appeared to the man again. “God bless you now,” she said, “for what you did for me, for now I’m at peace.”
A Tinker’s Daughter:
I heard of what happened to a family in the town. One night a thing that looked like a goose came in. And when they said nothing to it, it went away up the stairs with a noise like lead. Surely if they had questioned it, they’d have found it to be some soul in trouble.
And there was another soul came back that was in trouble because of a ha’porth of salt it owed.
And there was a priest was in trouble and appeared after death, and they had to say Masses for him, because he had done some sort of a crime on a widow.
Mrs. Farley:
One time myself I was at Killinan, at a house of the Clancys’ where the father and mother had died, but it was well known they often come to look after the children. I was walking with another girl through the fields there one evening and I looked up and saw a tall woman dressed all in black, with a mantle of some sort, a wide one, over her head, and the waves of the wind were blowing it off her, so that I could hear the noise of it. All her clothes were black, and had the appearance of being new. And I asked the other girl did she see her, and she said she did not. For two that are together can never see such things, but only one of them. So when I heard she saw nothing I ran as if for my life, and the woman seemed to be coming after me, till I crossed a running stream and she had no power to cross that. And one time my brother was stopping in the same house, and one night about twelve o’clock there came a smell in the house like as if all the dead people were there. And one of the girls whose father and mother had died got up out of her bed, and began to put her clothes on, and they had to lock the doors to stop her from going away out of the house.
There was a woman I knew of that after her death was kept for seven years in a tree m Kinadyfe, and for seven years after that she was kept under the arch of the little bridge beyond Kilchriest, with the water running under her. And whether there was frost or snow she had no shelter from it) not so much as the size of a leaf.
At the end of the second seven years she came to her husband, and he passing the bridge on the way home from Loughrea, and when he felt her near him he was afraid, and he didn’t stop to question her, but hurried on.
So then she came in the evening to the house of her own little girl. But she was afraid when she saw her, and fell down in a faint. And the woman’s sister’s child was in the house, and when the little girl told her what she saw, she said “You must surely question her when she comes again.” So she came again that night, but the little girl was afraid again when she saw her and said nothing. But the third night when she came the sister’s child, seeing her own little girl was afraid, said “God bless you, God bless you.” And with that the woman spoke and said “God bless you for saying that.” And then she told her all that had happened her and where she had been all the fourteen years. And she took out of her dress a black silk handkerchief and said: “I took that from my husband’s neck the day I met him on the road from Loughrea, and this very night I would have killed him, because he hurried away and would not stop to help me, but now that you have helped me I’ll not harm him. But bring with you to Kilmaeduagh, to the graveyard, three cross sticks with wool on them, and three glasses full of salt, and have three Masses said for me; and I’ll appear to you when I am at rest.” And so she did; and it was for no great thing she had done that trouble had been put upon her.
John Cloran:
That house with no roof was made a hospital of in the famine, and many died there. And one night my father was passing by and he saw some one standing all in white, and two men beside him, and he thought he knew one of the men and spoke to him and said “Is that you, Martin?” But he never spoke nor moved. And as to the thing in white, he could not say was it man or woman, but my father never went by that place again at night.
The last person buried in a graveyard has the care of all the other souls until another is to he buried, and then the soul can go and shift for itself. It may be a week or a month or a year, but watch the place it must till another soul comes.
There was a man used to be giving short measure, not giving the full yard, and one time after his death there was a man passing the river and the horse he had would not go into it. And he heard the voice of the tailor saying from the river he had a message to send to his wife, and to tell her not to be giving short measure, or she would be sent to the same place as him-self. There was a hymn made about that.
There was a woman lived in Rathkane, alone in the house, and she told me that one night something came and lay over the bed and gave three great moans. That was all ever she heard in the house.
The shadows of the dead gather round at Samhain time to see is there any one among their friends saying a few Masses for them.
An Islander:
Down there near the point, on the 6th of March, 1883, there was a curragh upset and five boys were drowned. And a man from County Clare told me that he was on the coast that day, and that he saw them walking towards him on the Atlantic.
There is a house down there near the sea, and one day the woman of it was sitting by the fire, and a little girl came in at the door, and a red cloak about her, and she sat down by the fire. And the woman asked her where did she come from, and she said that she had just come from Connemara. And then she went out, and when she was going out the door she made herself known to her sister that was standing in it, and she called out to the mother. And when the mother knew it was the child she had lost near a year before, she ran out to call her, for she wouldn’t for all the world to have not known her when she was there. But she was gone and she never came agam.
There was this boy’s father took a second wife, and he was walking home one evening, and his wife behind him, and there was a great wind blowing, and he kept his head stooped down because of the seaweed coming blowing into his eyes. And she was about twenty paces behind, and she saw his first wife come and walk close beside him, and he never saw her, having his head down, but she kept with him near all the way. And when they got borne, she told the husband who was with him, and with the fright she got she was bad in her bed for two or three day–do you remember that, Martin? S
he died after, and he has a third wife taken now.
I believe all that die are brought among them, except maybe an odd old person.
A Kildare Woman:
There was a woman I knew sent into the Rotunda Hospital for an operation. And when she was going she cried when she was saying good-bye to her cousin that was a friend of mine, for she felt in her that she would not come back again. And she put her two arms about her going away and said, “If the dead can do any good thing for the living, I’ll do it for you.” And she never recovered, but died in the hospital. And within a few weeks something came on her cousin, my friend, and they said it was her side that was paralysed, and she died. And many said it was no common illness, but that it was the dead woman that had kept to her word.
A Connemara Man:
There was a boy in New York was killed by rowdies, they killed him standing against a lamp-post and he was frozen to it, and stood there till morning. And it is often since that time he was seen in the room and the passages of the house where he used to be living.
And in the house beyond a woman died, and some other family came to live in it; but every night she came back and stripped the clothes off them, so at last they went away.
When some one goes that owes money, the weight of the soul is more than the weight of the body, and it can’t get away and keeps wandering till some one has courage to question it.
Mrs. Casey:
My grandmother told my mother that in her time at Cloughhallymore, there was a woman used to appear in the churchyard of Rathkeale, and that many boys and girls and children died with the fright they got when they saw her.
So there was a gentleman living near was very sorry for all the children dying, and he went to an old woman to ask her was there any way to do away with the spirit that appeared. So she said if any one would have courage to go and to question it, he could do away with it. So the gentleman went at midnight and waited at the churchyard, and he on his horse, and had a sword with him. So presently the shape appeared and he called to it and said, “Tell me what you are?” And it came over to him, and when he saw the face he got such a fright that he turned the horse’s head and galloped away as hard as he could. But after galloping a long time he looked down and what did he see beside him but the woman running and her hand on the horse. So he took his sword and gave a slash at her, and cut through her arm, so that she gave a groan and vanished, and he went on home.
And when he got to the stable and had the lantern lighted, you may think what a start he got when he saw the hand still holding on to the horse, and no power could lift it off. So he went into the house and said his prayers to Almighty God to take it off. And all night long, he could hear moaning and crying about the house. And in the morning when he went out the hand was gone, but all the stable was splashed with blood. But the woman was never seen in those parts again.
A Seaside Man:
And many see the faeries at Knock and there was a carpenter died, and he could be heard all night in his shed making coffins and carts and all sorts of things, and the people are afraid to go near it. There were four boys from Knock drowned five years ago, and often now they are seen walking on the strand and in the fields and about the village.
There was a man used to go out fowling, and one day his sister said to him, “Whatever you do don’t go out tonight and don’t shoot any wild-duck or any birds you see flying-for tonight they are all poor souls travelling.”
An Old Man in Galway Workhouse:
Burke of Carpark’s son died, but he used often to be seen going about afterwards. And one time a herd of his father’s met with him and he said, “Come tonight and help us against the hurlers from the north, for they have us beat twice, and if they beat us a third time, it will be a bad year for Ireland.”
It was in the daytime they had the hurling match through the streets of Gaiway. No one could see them, and no one could go outside the door while it lasted, for there went such a whirl-wind through the town that you could not look through the window.
And he sent a message to his father that he would find some paper he was looking for a few days before, behind a certain desk, between it and the wall, and the father found it there. He would not have believed it was his son the herd met only for that.
A Munster Woman:
I have only seen them myself like dark shadows, but there’s many can see them as they are. Surely they bring away the dead among them.
There was a woman in County Limerick that died after her baby being born. And all the people were in the house when the funeral was to be, crying for her. And the cars and the horses were out on the road. And there was seen among them a carriage full of ladies, and with them the woman was sitting that they were crying for, and the baby with her, and it dressed.
And there was another woman I knew of died, and left a family, and often after, the people saw her in their dreams, and always in rich clothes, though all the clothes she had were given away after she died, for the good of her soul, except maybe her shawl. And her husband married a serving girl after that, and she was hard to the children, and one night the woman came back to her, and had like to throw her out of the window in her nightdress, till she gave a promise to treat the children well, and she was afraid not to treat them well after that.
There was a farmer died and he had done some man out of a saddle, and he came back after to a friend, and gave him no rest till he gave a new saddle to the man he had cheated.
Airs. Casey:
There was a woman my brother told me about and she had a daughter that was red-haired. And the girl got married when she was under twenty, for the mother had no man to tend the land, so she thought best to let her go. And after her baby being born, she never got strong but stopped in the bed, and a great many doctors saw her but did her no good.
And one day the mother was at Mass at the chapel and she got a start, for she thought she saw her daughter come in to the chapel with the same shawl and clothes on her that she had be-fore she took to the bed, but when they came out from the chapel, she wasn’t there. So she went to the house, and asked was she after going out, and what they told her was as if she got a blow, for they said the girl hadn’t ten minutes to live, and she was dead before ten minutes were out And she appears now sometimes; they see her drawing water from the well at night and bringing it into the house, but they find nothing there in the morning.
A Connemara Man:
There was a man had come back from Boston, and one day he was out in the bay, going towards Aran with £3 worth of cable he was after getting from McDonagh’s store in Gaiway. And he was steering the boat, and there were two turf-boats along with him, and all in a minute they saw he was gone, swept off the boat with a wave and it a dead calm.
And they saw him come up once, straight up as if he was pushed, and then he was brought down again and rose no more.
And it was some time after that a friend of his in Boston, and that was coming home to this place, was in a crowd of people out there. And he saw him coming to him and he said, “I heard that you were drowned,” and the man said, “I am not dead, but I was brought here, and when you go home, bring these three guineas to McDonagh in Galway for it’s owned him for the cable I got from him.” And he put the three guineas in his hand and vanished away.
An Old Army Man:
I have seen hell myself. I had a sight of it one time in a vision. It had a very high wall around it, all of metal, and an archway in the wall, and a straight walk into it, just like what would be leading into a gentleman’s orchard, but the edges were not trimmed with box but
with red-hot metal. And inside the wall there were cross walks, and I’m not sure what there was to the right, but to the left there was five great furnaces and they full of souls kept there with great chains. So I turned short and went away; and in turning I looked again at the wall and I could see no end to it.
And another time I saw purgatory. It seemed to be in a level place and no walls around it, but it all one bright blaze, and the souls standing in it And they suffer near as much as in hell only there are no devils with them there and they have the hope of heaven.
And I heard a call to me from there “Help me to come out of this!” And when I looked it was a man I used to know in the army, an Irishman and from this country, and I believe him to be a descendant of King O’Connor of Athenry. So I stretched out my hand first but then I called out “I’d be burned in the flames before I could get within three yards of you.” So then he said, “Well, help me with your prayers,” and so I do.
____________

The Poetry Of Gabriel Rosenstock…
Le Breis is Míle Bliain
Mo ghrá Thú!

Gach soicind.

Nuair a chorraíonn an ghaoth an féar

Lingim Chugat ionam

Id bharróg dhorcha soilsím

Is mé Aimhirghin – cé eile? –

Mholas T’ainm thar chách

For More than a Thousand Years
I love You!

Every second

When wind rustles the grass –

Now and tomorrow –

I leap to You in me

In your dark embrace I shine

I am Amergin – who else –

I have praised Your name over all.

—
Introduction to Year of the Goddess
Why not envision a new eco-poetics grounded in a heritage thousands of years old which upholds that everything in the universe is sacred?

Francisco X. Alarcón
Space, time and Borges now are leaving me …

J L Borges
The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of the personality.

T S Eliot

BLIAIN AN BHANDÉ

YEAR OF THE GODDESS
Gabriel Rosenstock
Note
One does not often think of the tripartite goddess who gave her blessed name to Ireland – Éire, Banba, Fódla – not to mention other goddesses who have left their trace on the landscape, Danu of the Paps of Danu for instance.
Devotional poetry in India goes by the name of bhakti. In the heel of the hunt, a bhakta does not really adore or pine for any god or goddess; as with Mirabai’s love affair with Krishna, or Muktabai singing her own glistening Self; what is sought and what is praised is the brightness of eternal brightness, our shared Self, knowing neither birth nor death.
Some words in this poem sequence are ‘shaded’ to allow for another reading of a line, or a faint echo, a game much cherished by the Celtic poets of yore. Thus, the reader sees the word as the world when written as world and encounters bhakti invocations such as ma (mother) hidden in the word mad!

– GR

(1) You are in me

A bhé luisneach

A ghrian gan choinne i mí Feabhra

A bhláth roimh am

Soilsíonn Tú an oíche

Titeann Tú id réalta reatha

Sprais i ndiaidh spraise

Is tá mo spéirse anois lom
Taoi ionam

Brightest being

In sun-surprised February

Flower out of season

You illuminate the night

A falling star

Shower after shower

My sky is empty now
You are in me

—

(2) From each and every pore
As gach póir Díot scallann an ghrian

Ar Do dhamhsa gan chríoch

Taobh dorcha na gealaí is geal

Má osclaíonn Tú do bhéal

Éalóidh réaltaí, canfaidh iomainn Duit

Is Tusa iadsan

Ealaí ag eitilt go gasta ar gcúl

Conas a shamhlóinn barróg Uait

Mura bpléascfainn Id réaltbhuíon?
From each and every pore look how the sun beams

On your eternal dance

The dark side of the moon is bright

If you open Your mouth

Stars will escape and chant their hymns for You

You are they

Swiftly swans fly backwards

How can I imagine Your embrace

Without exploding in Your galaxy?

—
(3) From clear air
As aer glan a tháinís

As spéir íon

Ár mbeatha

As tobar ár ndúile

D’éirim á brú orm go fíochmhar

Níl dóthain nóimintí sa lá

Nocht Tú féin

Do bheola

As a séideann

Teangacha lasracha

Mo dháin
You came from clear air

Pure sky

Of our being

Wellspring of desire

Your fierce intelligence pressing on me

There are not enough minutes to the day

Show Yourself

Your lips

From which issue

The flaming tongues

Of my poem

—

(4) A daisy picked
Nóinín a phiocas Duit

Agus ba ghrian chomh millteach sin é

Gur dalladh mé

Ach chneasaigh na piotail

I gceann na haimsire mé

Do ghéaga áthasacha

Ina gceann is ina gceann
A daisy picked for You

Such a massive sun

I was blinded

But the petals healed me

In time

Your joyous limbs

One by one

—
(5) Old Wall
Féach an seanfhalla coincréite seo

Á théamh ag an ngrian.

Is gearr go mbeidh na seangáin amuigh

Chun damhsa Duit
Cé acu ab fhearr Leat?

Gasta nó mall?

Nó iad a bheith ina stad?

Look at this old concrete wall

Being warmed by the sun.

Soon the ants will come out

To dance for You
What would You like?

Something rapid or languorous

Or that they be perfectly still?

—
(6) I do not exist
s ní rabhas riamh ann

Ní bhead

Níl slí dom Ionatsa

Níl slí d’éinne

Is Tusa sinn, is sinne Thú
I never was

Nor will be

No space for me in You

Or for anyone

You are us, we You.

—

(7) Were I a little bird
Na caora úd ar an gcuileann

Ar aon dath le do bheola

Nach santach iad na héin Id dhiaidh.
Those berries on the holly

The same colour as your lips

How birds hunger for You.

____________

As I beat a retreat from the Haight in the fall of 67′ to points south…. this album and song informed my state of mind. Yes, transcendence might still be reached, maybe by excess, or by an infusion of dark beauty when the clear white light had faded… T
Tales Of Brave Ulysses

You thought the leaden winter would bring you down forever,

But you rode upon a steamer to the violence of the sun.
And the colors of the sea blind your eyes with trembling mermaids,

And you touch the distant beaches with tales of brave ulysses:

How his naked ears were tortured by the sirens sweetly singing,

For the sparkling waves are calling you to kiss their white laced lips.
And you see a girls brown body dancing through the turquoise,

And her footprints make you follow where the sky loves the sea.

And when your fingers find her, she drowns you in her body,

Carving deep blue ripples in the tissues of your mind.
The tiny purple fishes run laughing through your fingers,

And you want to take her with you to the hard land of the winter.
Her name is aphrodite and she rides a crimson shell,

And you know you cannot leave her for you touched the distant sands

With tales of brave ulysses; how his naked ears were tortured

By the sirens sweetly singing.
The tiny purple fishes run lauging through your fingers,

And you want to take her with you to the hard land of the winter.

We spent an evening of it recently with a host of friends who came by… an inspiration for this entry. Much love to Morgan, PK, & Terry…
Gwyllm

The Linkage:

Odd Skull Boosts Human, Neandertal Interbreeding Theory

Stone Age site surfaces after 8000 years

Ark. couple have their 17th child

________

A Visual Meditation:

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_________

Poetry: The Delights of Absinthe
“After the first glass you see things as you wish they were.

After the second, you see things as they are not.

Finally you see things as they really are,

and that is the most horrible thing in the world.”
“If he didn’t drink [absinthe], he would be somebody else.

Personality must be accepted for what it is.

You mustn’t mind that a poet is a drunk,

rather that drunks are not always poets.”
“Absinthe has a wonderful color, green.

A glass of absinthe is as poetical as anything in the world.

What difference is there between a glass of absinthe and a sunset?”
“The only way to get rid of a temptation, is to yield to it…”
-Oscar Wilde

—

Indian summer
From the sickroom’s chloral smelling pillows,

darkened by suffocated sighs

and hitherto unheard blasphemes;

from the bedside table,

encumbered with medicinal bottles,

prayer books and Heine,

I stumbled out on the balcony

to look at the sea.

Shrouded in my flowered blanket

I let the October sun shine

on my yellow cheeks

and onto a bottle of absinthe,

green as the sea,

green as the spruce twigs

on a snowy street

where a funeral cortège had gone ahead.
The sea was dead calm

and the wind slept –

as if nothing had passed!

Then came a butterfly,

a brown awful butterfly,

which once was a caterpillar

but now crawled its way up

out of a newly set heap of leaves,

fooled by the sunshine

oh dear!
Trembling from cold

or accustomedness

he sat down

on my flowered blanket.

And he chose among the roses

and the anilin lilacs

the smallest and the ugliest one –

how can one be so stupid!
When the hour had passed

and I got up

to go and get inside,

he still sat there,

the stupid butterfly.

He had fulfilled his destiny

and was dead,

the stupid bastard!
-August Strindberg – Translated by Markus Hartsmar, February 2007

—
That night I drank deeply
That night, the night before my wedding day,

I drank deeply and long of my favourite nectar.

Glass after glass I prepared, and drained each one off with insatiable and ever-increasing appetite.
I drank till the solid walls of my own room, when I at last found myself there,

appeared to me like transparent glass, shot throughout with emerald flame.

Surrounded on all sides by phantoms.
Beautiful, hideous, angelic, devilish.
I reeled to my couch in a sort of waking swoon, conscious of strange sounds everywhere,

like the clanging of brazen bells, and the silver fanfaranade of the trumpets of war,

conscious too of a similar double sensation –

namely, as though Myself were divided into two persons, who opposed each other in deadly combat,

in which neither could possibly obtain even the merest shadow-victory!
-Marie Corelli

________

Abby’s’ Kitchen
This is some of the work that our friend Paul did for Abby over in North Portland. Paul works with us frequently, and I would consider him a master craftsman of the highest degree. He is also a ceramicist, and an oriental paper maker as well. He is the best of company on any job!
Abby and Tom live in north Portland. Abby works as a musician, in a flute quartet if I recall correctly. She and Tom have a wonderful rambling house on an large lot, it is a very nice place indeed…. Her kitchen is the center of her home, and even more so now I would venture….
Gwyllm

Our friend Paul with his Ceramic Bagels…

The Bagels Mounted on Abby’s wall behind the stove…

Paul needed a snack….!

The Finished Kitchen Collage…

____________
Poems For Kitchens, Eating & Drinking…

Hunger, The Pang

Our mother earth gives

For one good grain sown

Hundreds of fresh grains

For our food in return.
How many sweet fruits

For a life time she gives

For one seed she takes

As one tree it grows?
Any animal on the land

Or any bird on the air

For its morrow’s food

Does it take all the care?
For the food on the ground

How a crow makes a sound

Of ‘caw’ to call crows around

Just to share what it found?
When big cooked rice balls

An elephant in its mouth takes

A part of it on the floor spills

That feeds hundreds of ants.
But when a have on this earth

For his self, the food he hoards,

Doesn’t the have-not’s mouth

Go unfed for days countless?
The food in a pompous feast

A junk of it goes as rubbish.

If this goes to the poor at least

Will that not fulfill God’s wish?
The worst pain in the world

Is what the hunger gives

But this can be solved

If all follow the crows.
-Rajaram Ramachandran

—

A Drinking Song
Wine comes in at the mouth

And love comes in at the eye;

That’s all we shall know for truth

Before we grow old and die.

I lift the glass to my mouth,

I look at, and I sigh.
-William Butler Yeats

—
On A Slope Of Orchard

There on a slope of orchard, Francis laid

A damask napkin wrought with horse and hound,

brought out a dusky loaf that smelt of home,

And cut down, a pasty costly made,

Where quail and pigeon, lark and leveret, lay

Like fossils of the rock, with golden yolks

Imbedded and in jellied.
-Alfred, Lord Tennyson

—
A Recipe for a Salad

To make this condiment, your poet begs

The pounded yellow of two hard-boiled eggs;

Two boiled potatoes, passed through kitchen sieve,

Smoothness and softness to the salad give.
Let onion atoms lurk within the bowl,

And, half suspected, animate the whole.

Of mordant mustard add a single spoon,

Distrust the condiment that bites so soon;

But deem it not, thou man of herbs, a fault,

To add a double quantity of salt.
Four times the spoon with oil from Lucca brown,

And twice with vinegar procured from town;

And, lastly, o’er the flavored compound toss

A magic soupcion of anchovy sauce.
O, green and glorious! O herbaceous treat!

‘T would tempt the dying anchorite to eat:

Back to the world he’d turn his fleeting soul,

And plunge his fingers in the salad bowl!

Serenely full, the epicure would say,

“Fate cannot harm me, I have dined to-day.”
-Sydney Smith

—
The Song Of Right And Wrong

Feast on wine or fast on water,

And your honor shall stand sure

If an angel out of heaven

Brings you something else to drink,

Thank him for his kind attentions,

Go and pour it down the sink.
G.K. Chesterton