Nemeton/ Frithgaerd

The places in the mind
Become their own ritual.
In supermarkets, shopping malls, office blocks,
In hotels and airports and railway stations,
On motorways, enclosed in my car,
I lose touch with the human.
What is it, this passion to belong
To consecrate and own the land,
To beat the bounds of self
And defend it from the stranger?
There is only one way to view the world,
One truth, one reality, beyond contradiction;
All else is barbarism and superstition;
Danger must be neutered,
Turned to sentiment and nostalgia.
The eye’s inventions scape vistas
And perspectives of the lordly spirit
To enjoy its estate, gazing out from prospects
To make believe that all is fixed and timeless.
Did it all begin that bright May morning-
From the pen of Isaak Walton-
When the three-Piscator,Venator and Auceps-
Met on the road leading out of London
To trek to the River Lea,their recreation
The worship of God’s blessings to man?
Sound guides us inward to meaning;
In the Pyrenean caves of Ariège
At certain spots on the palaeolithic wallpaintings
If you sing or whistle at the correct pitch
It will trigger fantastic resonances,
Penetrating the cortex of the brrain;
At Hal Saflieni on Malta, speak
Into a special recess in the rock
And it resonates through the vaults
In multifarioustones, from whisper
To boom, to awe the worshipful;
And in Neolithic chambered tombs
When drums, chanting and singing
Is performed inside it sets up
A standing wave that plays against the rock
And conjures the uncanny, full
Of ventriloquism and godly harmonics…
Here, at the border, there is little we can know
For sure, it is all belief, some restless faith
Forever changing form, and every place
Is many, multiplying in waves.
So the game draws us in its figures,
Draws us inwards, to learn from the difference
Of each occasion, each cadence,
Whether or not we ever understand.