Night of Madness

by Ian Anderson
copyright 2000

Atop the hill, Walpurgisnacht,
A balefire stirs in fitful breeze.
The old king comes to die in peace,
The young king lifts his glass,
From moldering leaves fresh shoots sprout.
Winter’s cold shrinks to the heart of the stone.

The guardian of darkness hides in the earth
To wait out the withering heat
In a glade often dreamed of
Where moss wraps tightly
Round cold grey rocks
Covering forgotten inscriptions
Of the people of the dawn
Whose ways have not died after all,
But live on deeply hidden,
Outlasting a longer, fiercer summer,
Dreaming of a winter’s return
When the overwrought fire gods
Shall cool in moist loam
Lest their hot breath scorch all the world.

Canted at an angle, buried to his shoulders,
The granite king’s head slowly cracks
In the embracing roots of a crowning oak,
Til the night when the egg bursts open
And the long sleeping one awakens
To seek rebirth in the dying embers
Of the iron king’s ruinous reign.
The heart of darkness lies hidden
In the garden they called Evil,
Holding the secret of life’s continuation.

Shifting visions in the fire
Tell of what the trees have known,
Releasing messages carried
In gossamer stands on the wind
From distant cloud swept mountains,
Telling of the reweaving of the world.
Light and dark shall dance again
Where iron treads had crushed all life.
Parched and trampled mud shall green again
Til dry dust becomes a reedy marsh.

Fragile incandescent clinkers
Pulse with seething hunger,
Burning hollow and collapsing.
A serpent writhes in the glowing heart,
Clasping an apple too hot to handle,
Of chaos, destruction, and madness.
For the prettiest, the furthest to fall.
From the fertile ashes of ruin will grow
The apples of the Blessed Isle
As bright as they have ever been
Sprouting from long denied seeds.

©2000 Ian D. Anderson

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