Poem for Brigid

Yep, I know it's a day late. And my chosen piece isn't even a full poem. But it's the line that adorns my altar and the one that keeps me going at times.

~

Though a country be sundered, hills and rivers endure;

And spring comes green again to trees and grasses

Where petals have been shed like tears

And lonely birds have sung their grief.

~

--Tu Fu, from "A Spring View" (c. 750AD), trans. Witter Bynner

-N

Imbolc plannings and early buds

It's a beautiful sunny day today, but still cold enough that the heavy blanket of snow (6-8 inches, although it looks like less here) that fell Friday night and Saturday morning is still fully intact. Apologies for the cellphone pic, but here you can see those gorgeous blue shadows on the snow, as well as the narcissus (just about to explode into bloom) on the left, big feathery yarrow on the right, and the little tiny pot to the far right containing some broadleaf plantain rescued from downtown Durham.

Two more days till Imbolc/Candlemas/Lady Day/Brigid's Day/whatever you like to call it! It's going to be my second witchy birthday so I'm trying to plan something a little bigger than just lighting candles and incense and reading a little poetry, as my rituals mostly are these days. Still don't have a circle or such-like to celebrate with, but I'm already planning a family meal (a custard, braided bread, carrots in calendula-butter (poor man's saffron), and some sort of protein, as I still have to think about nutrition) in honor of Brigid, even if it's only I and the Baird blood in Amam's veins that realise it.

I'm also planning on participating in the 5th Annual Cyberspace Poetry Slam! Heard about it from Joanna Colbert of the Gaian Tarot, who's also got a picture up of her gorgeously decorated Imbolc altar, so I highly recommend you check it out. Basically, the Slam is about all and any bloggers who want to do so putting up a piece of poetry in honor of Brigid, Imbolc, Spring, or the like (can be yours or just a bit you like, as I will do) anytime during February 2nd. If you choose to do this, I suggest you leave a comment on Joanna's post about the subject linking to your post - she wants to do a network sort of thing.

MIND/SPIRIT: The Lake Isle of Innisfree

Well, this was going to be a post about awareness, the next grace on Sylvan's list, as well as some general updates and such. However, I've been somewhat distracted from that - as I was reading through the day's postings, I noticed that the article on pomanders linked to through JPC's blog was entitled "Golden Apples of the Sun." Being something of a lit. nerd, I remembered that this was a line from a poem by W. B. Yeats, but couldn't remember the rest, so I looked it up - the poem is called "The Song of Wandering Aengus" and is a beautiful, complete story in only three stanzas that I won't spoil, so click on the link and read it now.

However, as lovely as that poem is, it's not my favorite of Yeats'. My favorite is much more popular and over-anthologized, but even the glare of too much popularity can't obscure the gentle evocativeness of "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," which is as follows:

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of linnet's wings

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

Yeats wrote this when he was a young man of about my own age (23, I think) living in London. At the time the Irish were still quite looked down upon by the English, and Yeats, with his Sligo accent (in the West of Ireland - somewhat equivalent in American terms to that of the Deep South or mountain areas) must have been especially marginalized. Also, the island he based his dreams on was not viewed as such a picturesque place by the locals, who gave it the unseemly name of "Rat Island" before he rechristened it, and the last I knew, they were still calling it that, unaware of the dreams of a tiny, peaceful Avalon drawn for the world by one of their countrymen. Whatever his neighbors called it, it could still be the focus of Waldenesque daydreams for a lonely young man living among strangers in the middle of a cold, dark, grey city.

I won't go into deep detail about the imagery of the poem or wax on much longer about how it is the perfect escape. I'll only say that this tiny, perfect picture of a peaceful life spent in the midst of nature is, essentially, what I want my life to be. It is what I have longed for through all the long hours of work and study in the past several years, the dream I barely dare to wish for because it doesn't fit in with the plan of what other people want for me. It is nothing like the streamlined, modern daydreams of my father and sisters, full of nice cars and big houses and power in the form of too much money - but it is my dream, and I know that I am not alone in wishing for it - there must be others who, too, "hear it in the deep heart's core."

-N