i{Sung by the people of Faery over Diarmuid and Grania,}
i{in their bridal sleep under a Cromlech.}

WE who are old, old and gay,
O so old!
Thousands of years, thousands of years,
If all were told:
Give to these children, new from the world,
Silence and love;
And the long dew-dropping hours of the night,
And the stars above:
Give to these children, new from the world,
Rest far from men.
Is anything better, anything better?
Tell us it then:
Us who are old, old and gay,
O so old!
Thousands of years, thousands of years,
If all were told.
...

I am very bothered when I think
of the bad things I have done in my life.
Not least that time in the chemistry lab
when I held a pair of scissors by the blades
and played the handles
in the naked lilac flame of the Bunsen burner;
then called your name, and handed them over.

O the unrivalled stench of branded skin
as you slipped your thumb and middle finger in,

...

i sleep in darkness
it's no pleasure
it's more emptiness
than love and leisure

the dreams don't come yet
and I'm listening like mad
to what? i don't know

deep cascading water

...

I fellowed sleep who kissed me in the brain,
Let fall the tear of time; the sleeper's eye,
Shifting to light, turned on me like a moon.
So, planning-heeled, I flew along my man
And dropped on dreaming and the upward sky.

I fled the earth and, naked, climbed the weather,
Reaching a second ground far from the stars;
And there we wept I and a ghostly other,
My mothers-eyed, upon the tops of trees;
I fled that ground as lightly as a feather.

'My fathers' globe knocks on its nave and sings.'
'This that we tread was, too, your father's land.'
'But this we tread bears the angelic gangs
Sweet are their fathered faces in their wings.'
'These are but dreaming men. Breathe, and they fade.'

Faded my elbow ghost, the mothers-eyed,
As, blowing on the angels, I was lost
On that cloud coast to each grave-grabbing shade;
I blew the dreaming fellows to their bed
Where still they sleep unknowing of their ghost.

Then all the matter of the living air
Raised up a voice, and, climbing on the words,
I spelt my vision with a hand and hair,
How light the sleeping on this soily star,
How deep the waking in the worlded clouds.


...

shot in the eye
shot in the brain
shot in the ****
shot like a flower in the dance

amazing how death wins hands down
amazing how much credence is given to idiot forms of life

amazing how laughter has been drowned out
amazing how viciousness is such a constant

...

i have always believed
that life is what i make it.
i decide everything: when to
finish school, when to marry,
whom to marry, and i
did it well, what business
to make, how to earn my
money, and i did it well, so
well that i believed in myself,
and i relied on my decisions,

...

WHITHER dost thou hide from the magic of my flute-call?
In what moonlight-tangled meshes of perfume,
Where the clustering keovas guard the squirrel's slumber,
Where the deep woods glimmer with the jasmine's bloom?

I'll feed thee, O beloved, on milk and wild red honey,
I'll bear thee in a basket of rushes, green and white,
To a palace-bower where golden-vested maidens
Thread with mellow laughter the petals of delight.

Whither dost thou loiter, by what murmuring hollows,
Where oleanders scatter their ambrosial fire?
Come, thou subtle bride of my mellifluous wooing,
Come, thou silver-breasted moonbeam of de- sire!
...

The moon drained white by day
lifts from the hill
where the old pear-tree fallen in storm
springs up in blossom still.
Women believe in the moon:
this branch I hold
is not more white and still than she
whose flower is ages old,
and so I carry home
flowers from the pear

...

Winter goodbye and good riddance
(Lingering spectre prodding my patience.)
Stuff your huff and puff from frosting my composure
Inflicting upon my person discomfort and displeasure.

Helpless am I to the winds of ghoul
Who blow upon me cold and cruel.
Abruptly interrupting as I seek companion
Within a shelter of comfort, I imagine Utopian.


...