Selection from The Mixtape of Taliesin: Taliesin Errant

This poem is the first poem of the Book of Hearts in The Mixtape of Taliesin it is a winter’s poem and as such seems suitable to the season

TALIESIN ERRANT

Sleep is the Courting Bird

That droops its brilliant tail

Onto your cloudy brain

Then twirling thrice its regal neck

Pecks bronze & furious beak

Through your nascent thought

& settles in to guide the night.

The songs it sings are tuneless songs

The tones are silent tones

& in that silence dreams arrive

In antique garb & manner

Complaining of a winter journey

With hands cupped over burning coals

They scatter to the murky woods

Calling your name, calling the wind

The youngest wizard to have spun

From scalding cold & frozen fire

Along his sleeve a pendragon scrawls

That there are secrets of desire

Played upon a broken lyre

In plaintive echoes thru the halls.

Athwart his shirtfront a cunning fox

By mutation crawls into lizard

To rule the field of sable collar

Undone about pulsating throat

A lock of ginger hair unravels sere

As wrinkles feather wary eyes

The feast of youth is consumed by age

The table is spread, the guests assumed

Salamanders keep the candles lit -

Stags bearing candelabras of horn

Cast shadows onto the intricate chairs

But no shadow can replace

The living form & face

& the flame requires a presence to illuminate

Spiderwebs & early frost

Lace the lips of silver goblets

Lichen moss & spiderwort

Extend their battle-line along

The throne’s knobbled legs

Upon the backrest, among ancient runes

I cut a fresh sigil of my being & passing

Above, a falcon stoops beneath a cloud

The wind divides round upraised fist

All names recede within their mist

Both Guenhøcfr & Hadjewich

Fade to an idea’s resemblance

But though tongue turns, eyes blanch

There persists the solid speech, the blazing sight.

This has been a selection from The Mixtape of Taliesin — a book of poetry from Illuminati Ganga available for the Amazon Kindle.