Flowers For Socrates

by NONA BLYTH CLOUD

This is a re-post of a Word Cloud from 2016, because it’s October, the month for otherworldly poetry, and things that go bump in the night. 

In Celtic mythology, the Hag is called the Cailleach, the ‘veiled one’ meaning ‘veiled in mystery.’

There’s a caille (veil) between the world of mortals and the ‘otherworld’ of the Aos Sí, also called the Sith or Sidhe, who are not quite like fairies or elves, but embody many of their traits, along with some characteristics of goddesses and gods, in Celtic myth and legend.

‘Halloween’ has evolved from ‘All Hallows’ Eve’ (all holy, all saints), a Christian makeover of  Samhain (Sah-ween), but it is still rooted in the veiled mysteries.  Samhain is the Celtic turning of the year from old to new, when the veil between worlds is thinnest, and all the uncanny – human ghosts as they depart for the otherworld, the Sith, creatures of dream or nightmare – can slip through the mortal world, mingling with us.

Bards have always been fascinated by the ‘otherworld’ and the glimpse through the veil, in the time when all things meet; the fair and foul; the living, the dead, and the immortal. Their songs and stories, rhymes and odes, are meant to make you shiver, hesitating to put out the light as you you cast a wary glance over your your shoulder.

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All Souls

by Edith Wharton

I.

A thin moon faints in the sky o’erhead,
And dumb in the churchyard lie the dead.
Walk we not, Sweet, by garden ways,
Where the late rose hangs and the phlox delays,
But forth of the gate and down the road,
Past the church and the yews, to their dim abode.
For it’s turn of the year and All Souls’ night,
When the dead can hear and the dead have sight.

II.

Fear not that sound like wind in the trees:
It is only their call that comes on the breeze;
Fear not the shudder that seems to pass:
It is only the tread of their feet on the grass;
Fear not the drip of the bough as you stoop:
It is only the touch of their hands that grope —
For the year’s on the turn, and it’s All Souls’ night,
When the dead can yearn and the dead can smite.

III.

And where should a man bring his sweet to woo
But here, where such hundreds were lovers too?
Where lie the dead lips that thirst to kiss,
The empty hands that their fellows miss,
Where the maid and her lover, from sere to green,
Sleep bed by bed, with the worm between?
For it’s turn of the year and All Souls’ night,
When the dead can hear and the dead have sight.

IV.

And now that they rise and walk in the cold,
Let us warm their blood and give youth to the old.
Let them see us and hear us, and say: “Ah, thus
In the prime of the year it went with us!”
Till their lips drawn close, and so long unkist,
Forget they are mist that mingles with mist!
For the year’s on the turn, and it’s All Souls’ night,
When the dead can burn and the dead can smite.

V.

Till they say, as they hear us — poor dead, poor dead! —
“Just an hour of this, and our age-long bed —
Just a thrill of the old remembered pains
To kindle a flame in our frozen veins,
Just a touch, and a sight, and a floating apart,
As the chill of dawn strikes each phantom heart —
For it’s turn of the year and All Souls’ night,
When the dead can hear, and the dead have sight.”

VI.

And where should the living feel alive
But here in this wan white humming hive,
As the moon wastes down, and the dawn turns cold,
And one by one they creep back to the fold?
And where should a man hold his mate and say:
“One more, one more, ere we go their way”?
For the year’s on the turn, and it’s All Souls’ night,
When the living can learn by the churchyard light.

VII.

And how should we break faith who have seen
Those dead lips plight with the mist between,
And how forget, who have seen how soon
They lie thus chambered and cold to the moon?
How scorn, how hate, how strive, we too,
Who must do so soon as those others do?
For it’s All Souls’ night, and break of the day,
And behold, with the light the dead are away.

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