Another poem from twenty years ago. I seem to live in the past...


Cernunnos


In my infancy I was Pterseus, the Destroyer,
Come to take revenge on women
For my unloved babyhood
And my terrible emptiness.
Then I fell in love with the beautiful
And adored...
I knew Paradise.

In the green woodland I was Herne, the Hunter;
I paraded my imagination thru the forest.
The chapel of my childhood lay in the greenery,
The paths, the walks
From Lomondside to Lake Thun.
I carried with me Hermes' staff
Purchased in Aeschi when I was thirteen.

I went from childhood to adolescence
And then to love:
I lived agonies. I was not empty.
I suffered all those years in the North
Writing it down.
Then came South to the Royal City:
Bathanceaster.

This City was built for me.
They built it for me.
Around the hot springs constructed
The temple of the goddess.
First of earth, then of brick,
Then of Roman marble.
Old Bladud's town, Aquae Sulis.
This my inheritance.

Modern buildings for my comfort
To live in and a place of work.
Surrounded by the greenery.
They built me a University.
They built me a housing estate.
And a house where I could make a garden:
Of green bushes and colourful flowers.
Alyssum, snow-in-summer, heathers.

For I was King of the Wood,
The Cernunnos of Bath,
Lord of the Animals;
Stag-totem; Horned One; Devil.
I lived high on the hill
With my little black cat.
I collected books and record albums
And I met my fate...

She was the same as me. She hated her mother.
She was fire and earth and the warmth in the night.
I loved her and adored her.
She was my heart and my life.
Whispers in the dark tell of the bones of her face,
She was so beautiful.
She is immortal.

They built this City for her.
They built an Institute at Brighton for her.
They built Washington D.C. for her.
Me, I only had a house and my Computer.
I love my Computer.
It can talk to other computers in other cities.
Even to America.
It is the occupation of the great Hunter.

For I tracked her down and won her love
By the marvels of the language of poetry.
I knew her heart. The same wound as mine.
And I filled her soul with love
Until it overflowed from her eyes
Into my hungry heart.
I bathed in her love,
Knew immortality.
Was baptised the Cernunnos.

But she was a savage bitch
And spat in my face.
Retreated to her Institute
That was built for her.
I worked my magic
And sent out my horsemen,
Lean black horses,
The Royal Mail.
I wrote my heart for her.

I sold her children...
The love of them.
The horses clattered thru the greenwood
As they took the news.
She never uttered a word.
How I strove in my garden
Cultivating my plants
As I thought of her.
I was the craftsman.

Then she was gone to America
With her babies
And her new husband,
I lost my other half.
I am alone as Cernunnos
For I was elected in my childhood
When I ran free in the woods.
When on my green bicycle
I explored my little world.

I am the Lord of this world.
I live alone and suffer for it.
They feed me drugs
To control my imagination.
To banish the poetry
That won me my love.
I no longer have great pictures in my head.
I look over other's shoulders for those.
The liquid words have gone.
The syllables of rhyme
That marked the loves of my youth.

I am alone 'til the end of Time.
I have been alone since I was born.
Living in the tattered ruins of my imagination
In the Ruined City of the Saxons,
Constructed into a Georgian dream,
Constructed into a sad poem.
Living as an animal with an animal:
My black cat Fritz.
All I have had in my life
Has been immortal love
And that was snatched from me.

I have one lesson:
Don't believe in the love of the poets.
It leads to disaster.
The price is too great.
Better to emerge from the morning of life
With warm friendship and mutual thought
Than to burn in Hell
For loving what can never be had:
The return to before birth
When all was happy fantasy.

These dreams have occupied my mind
Since I was a child in the greenwood
Not knowing my inheritance.
I am the oldest man in Europe;
I have suffered eternity.
One day I will have a successor
As I was a successor.
And he will stride firmly over the old paths
Not believing his destiny:

It is to go from the richest experience of love
To the emptiness of the everyday world.
To see poetry and memory of childhood drain away.
To be left with an inferior language
And a grim suffering of the sadness of humanity.
There is no such thing as happiness. It is an illusion.
Wander thru the greenwood and be at one with Nature
For the Hunt for love has come to an untimely end.




Douglas Clark, Bath, Somerset, England ....
 http://www.dgdclynx.plus.com