The Marish Mere
Elspeth
who travels all the turny trails
and vagitates the vexy vales
awhere a world'll dare to be,
meandering the mully miles
mething temporality
and estimating essency
through tiffins teas and airy isles;
and laughing down the lairy lanes
of otherwhens and otherwheres,
of musome ease or candle cares
in brustle breeze or ruxy rains,
we harmonize in easy airs
of lakin lays and silly strains
in underrhythms overlain
with sorrowsongs or pensive prayers.
O with us drift the faerie fae,
all made of starry summer shade,
in misty colorglows array'd,
who live forever if a day.
I love to have them come and stay
and share an airy serenade
in netherland or forest glade
-- wherever whitherwhere away.
Upon a day in airly Spring,
within my psalt'ry-slapping tree,
a-singing jingo-rings in three:
'O merrie-ma-tanzie, come swathel my swing!'
as in a wood we chanc'd to be,
the faerie fae came flittering
and scuttering and skittering,
and one address'd herself to me:
'O Happy Holly, Elsie dear!
What fortunate advenience,
a cheery happy happenchance
to haply happen cheerly here!
for here is where the marsh immense
and boggy bottomlands appear.
O welcome to the Marish Mere,
yclept of ancient documents.'
I look'd and there beheld a glade
as far as the horizon hold,
a moory mire, moldy cold,
a swaly wallow, muddy made.
Descending from the woody wold,
my tree began to slog and wade,
and through the mud a fugue he play'd
as I his branches kept ahold.
O mud is like a lot of life,
and life is like a load of mud;
for first it flow in flume and flood,
and then it stick as thick as strife;
yet slice a crust with thrusty knife
and blome a blooth of blooten blood
as black as Marish boggy mud,
as red as rarest rush of life.
We came unto a boulder pile
as high as any lifeling's smile,
as long as, O, a couple mile,
and so we trode a twisty trial.
Anon we came upon a hole
as deep as any deathling's soul,
and down it fell a ladder pole
which caus'd my tree to pause a while.
'O Elsie, please to come ahead.
Your tree remain to stand the guard.
It doesn't look so very hard.
Do not bedrumble so with dread.'
With poky toes of slow retard,
I follow'd where my faerie led
and trusted in the truth she said
and gave the darkness no regard.
I clasp'd around the sturdy pole
and shimmied down as best I could
(and I can shimmy very good)
into the holy hollow hole
until I came (anyone would)
upon our golden holy goal:
around about the Maying pole,
the holy home of childhood.
A glowing fountain flowing there
beneath the Maypole tarse and tall
gave light to ev'ryone and all,
especially the faerie faire,
who led me through the holy hall,
and lightly on the merry air
they croon'd a clairy perry prayer
unto the calling waterfall:
'O waterfall, O rangling rain,
O thrippling linn of tumbling thunder,
bless us by thy wat'ry wonder;
take away our daily pain.
Let crash the power we come under;
smash our heavy worldly chain
and slash our spirit-flesh in twain
and split our ghosts and bones asunder!'
The faerie's clinch'd afast my arms
and storm'd the torrent cataract
to dash me down with horrent thwack
upon the rocks of sharpest harms
until I heard my skull to crack
in silent shrieks of flosh alarms
and flash my death in all its charms,
and then I sank to brightest black.
I floated in a sea of naught
and thought of nothing therewithal.
O nilli willi nary null --
I couldn't tell you what I thought.
I wasn't either rapt or dull;
it wasn't neither free nor fraught.
a dully dream, a vacant dot . .
I wasn't even there at all!
Yet slowly came a lowly glow,
a nitlet more than nullity,
a minikin of reality,
and whit by bit was it to grow
a star across infinity
who drew me to it, soft and slow,
till ever faster did I go
through oceans of eternity.
As I approach'd the speed of night,
I plung'd into a lane of light,
a tunnel brilliant, breme and bright,
and with me flew my faerie flight!
O up forever went we all
until at last the tunnel wall
bedimm'd until a dullen pall
and melded us to molten white.
And when I thought I wouldn't last,
the tunnel turn'd a wooden grey
and squeez'd us up so very fast
that out we popp'd upon the day!
O through a treetop's trunk we pass'd
up in the air, a faerie spray!
From out my treetop did we blast
just like a fireworks display!
When at the acme of my arc,
I felt a sweet euphoria
and coo'd a little 'gloria'
for someone's holy wonderwork
and all the luminaria
who sent me toppling through the dark
and brought me from a little spark
across phantasmagoria.
We slowly floated to my tree
who caught me in his leafy limbs,
who wafts away all scary whims
that ever might come after me,
and sang we there our starry hymns:
'O merrie-ma-tanzie, come freshen my free!'
and shar'd another cup of tea
to pass away the interims
'Twixt deaths,' my faerie slowly spoke,
'We always find ourselves back here
where things are never very clear.
Is this some kooky smoky joke?
Let's die again, O Elsie dear!'
-- I had to quash a little choke
with all the fae up in my oak
amidst the murky Marish Mere.
Elsie
---
FTSD 2002
in my tree