5th Annual Poetry for Brigid Event

Feel free to copy the following to your blog/facebook/website and spread the word. Let poetry bless the blogosphere once again!

• WHAT: A Bloggers (Silent) Poetry Reading



• WHEN: Anytime February 2, 2010



• WHERE: Your blog



• WHY: To celebrate the Feast of Brigid, aka Groundhog Day



• HOW: Select a poem you like - by a favorite poet or one of your own - to post February 2nd.



• RSVP: If you plan to publish, feel free to leave a comment and link on this post. Please pass this invitation on.

I have participated in this event for the last couple of years. This year I'm posting early again as I have a busy week ahead. The poem I have selected I found in an anthology called 'Sweet Singers, An Anthology of Carmarthenshire Poems'. I love that it originated in my neck of the woods! I also like the subject matter (the magic that can arise from darkness), as it feels right for me personally at this time in my life, and also at a time of year (Imbolc) when we celebrate the returning light and the end of the dark days of winter.

Alchemy

We are in a state of continual transformation: fresh atoms are continually being reincorporated in us, while others that we received beforehand escape from us.

('De l'Infinito', Giordano Bruno)

Wonderful, what will come out of darkness:

stars, owl voices, sleep;

water, green shoots, bird's eggs

with their own curved darkness;

gemstones; a whole and perfect child

from my unseen recesses; delight

from behind shut lids, finding each other,

fingers and tongues made delicate by night.

Great magic's performed after sunset.

Old alchemists conjuring angels,

witches dancing spirals under the moon;

drum-shamans, their spirit journeys;

three nights in a tomb

Staging a resurrection. Transformations

taking place out of ordinary sight.

Daylight gives us boundaries, fixes

everything. The world separates

into colours and chemicals, figures

and faces. Surfaces appear solid

reliable, unconfused. We can see

to operate complex machinery.

Only darkness permits mixing

of elements, stirring of essences

in secret, combing dark and bright

into new patterns while we sleep; so dawn

finds us transformed, shifted.

Star-particles link us with trees

dolphins and stones, travel through us

creating the universe. Base matter

becomes gold: in the Cauldron

of Annwyn, in the crucible of mind

we're all magicians. The Hidden Stone,

Elixir of Life, eludes us; we've lost

the art of working through touch

with invisible forces: but as darkness

rises, and we grope wildly, perhaps

out of chaos the magic will come right.

- Hilary Llewellyn Williams