Midsummer, leith an if you care;
the foreleith and the afterleith can fail
to knit. The intercalary comes there,
the fontanelle of the year, the fruiting swale
bandaged, but never healed, by a traitor moon:
we stumble on in haste for the hunter or the harvest,
but never quite escape our hearing of that croon,
that soft and pulsing place, when we are farthest
from the Yule. Suppose it blossomed then,
suppose the sutures opened, like all the doors
on a summer morning, and the cool air came in,
kissing knees and faces, pattering on all fours
over every linseed-polished floor,
suppose we gave a welcome to the third
glorious midsummer moon and called it lord,
suppose we all fell silent until his voice was heard.
3 comments:
A poem on the blue moon, the traitor moon, the fontanelle of the year. The Anglo-Saxons, according to not very reliable report, called June Forelitha ("before midsummer") and July Afterlitha ("after midsummer") but when the full moon came close enough to midsummer you'd get an intercalary month, to account for that inconvenient thirteenth full moon, the traitor moon, Judas's moon, the blue moon. Or maybe Bede made it up, or maybe I did, musing on the lost past. It's a long time, and the grass has grown since then.
I'd like to see this mysterious and haunting poem put to music. Maybe not. It already is music to my ears and always will be.
Oh, Dale, wow.
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