staunch
against November’s deepening gloom
across the shires on high crag altars,
Fan Foel, High Willhays, Mickle Fell,
Dunkery Beacon to Ronas Hill,
mourning mothers are lighting candles,
sacrificing psalms, hymns, chants, ghazals,
sorrowful songs and heart-wrench prayers
to the pantheon of deities
for winter’s drab blanket to lie deep,
and cold and bitter winds keep remnant
sons indoors, safe from spite-fuelled wounding –
a lull until spring’s awakening,
when thawing will banish snow away,
flushing both gutters and pavements clean,
again, of hard-dried life-blood staining.
© coolhermit 2021
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Spiritual and as hard as life in equal measure. I have a feeling there is an interesting story behind these words.
The poem reflects the pain of all the mothers suffering from their sons’ stabbings on the harsh streets – so it is set on the high places of Britain (Dunkery Beacon is Devon, Ronas Hill is Shetland, Fan Foel is Carmarthen and Mickle Fell is Yorkshire) the whole nation of mothers of all faiths wanting a bitter winter to staunch the flood of pointless deaths. It alludes to James Joyce’s The Dead in which all Ireland is smothered in snow. It was a friend, Pete McCleod, a great musician, who kinda prompted the idea he said he was working on… Read more »
Quite scene you paint with a grim backstory. I wonder for those unfamiliar with the specific cause of the grieving if you could have slipped in some info. somewhere in the poem or in an author’s note. I’m finding ‘remnant’ odd in its usage here.
Regards, Gerald.
The cause of the grieving is their sons being slaughtered on the streets – if the weather is that bad the the remaining sons – the remnant – are kept home at least by winter snow, they will be saved (for now) – since this is in sonnet form (albeit I added an extra (deletable) line for when/if it goes in my next book) it requires the reader to fill in the lacunae. There is no back story as such – it moves from the spiritual fantastickal of mothers interceding in ‘high places’ via the cold of winter snow to… Read more »