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Pastimes : A Poetry Corner
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To: Rainy_Day_Woman who wrote (129)11/26/1998 2:14:00 PM
From: Robert Douglas Hickey  Read Replies (1) of 1582
 
Something Auld

Shoeless
with daisy crowns
in white silk gowns
round the Maypole we bound
our ribbons of red and green.

Skip
said Teacher, Laugh, be Light
you are King and Queen, you know
people will wish to enjoy the show
so please don't move so solemn, so slow.

Teacher knew nothing of ancient rite
of old dark demands for sacrifice
yet she could see
she still made us to be
symbolic of fertility.

"Against May, or on Whitsonday
yung men and maides run gadding
over night to the woods.
They spend all the nighttime
in pleasant pasttime;
in morn they return
bearing boughs of birch
to deck their assemblies.

There is a great Lord present
among them, namely Sathan
Prince of Hel
superintendent over their sportes.

The chiefest jewel they bring
is their may-pole
stynking idol
covered all over
with floures and hearbs
bound round with strings
sometime painted in variable colour
followed with great devotion.

They straw the grounde
rounde about it
bind green boughs about it
set up arbors hard by it
then fall to daunce about it
like as a heathen people
at the dedication of the Idols."

Thus shrilled a Puritan
in 1583, yet
four centuries later
my celebration of May
still echoed the same way.

No puritanical voice
No Christ,
dying on a dead tree
promising rebirth of the soul
unmakes
the joyful burst of tulip, peony
sweet swell of green leaf
meadowlark's three-note descant.

No Easter deathcult rant
overshadow's spring's true meaning:
Rebirth of the Earth.

Robert Douglas Hickey
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