The Druids' Hymns To Cernnunos The Horned Poem by Keith Shorrocks Johnson

"To be a poet in a destitute time means: to attend, singing, to the trace of the fugitive gods. This is why the poet in the time of the world's night utters the holy." [Martin Heidegger]

THE DRUIDS' HYMNS TO CERNUNNOS THE HORNED
THE FIRST TRUTH

That the sky is our father
The earth our mother
The sun our elder brother
The moon our elder sister
And the stars our kin
Is not to be doubted.

But there is one ruler of all
The creator and destroyer
The one who also sustains
Knowing things must be:
Bringing the changing seasons
And the night that follows day

The sunlight, air, ground and water
Nourish and the greenness grows.
Nothing is more harmonious
And the rain, snow, lightning and rainbow
Are edicts and signs, as the mists
Rise from the marshes and return.

So the trees are born
From the smallest tokens
To reach for the heavens
From tangled roots
Linking and branching
From the common stock.

That the hunter will track his prey
And the forests will come alive
When the young girls dance
And the ploughman will break the earth
The harvest will be brought home
And there will be feasts with joy.

THE SECOND TRUTH

The trees shed their leaves at the Fall
When the stags bring their horns to full
So is the green tree left bare branched
And the sun-deer in winter crowned
After the hunt and forays to the bounds
The feasts with venison and elfin sounds
The sport of hunters, the lap of maids
The cauldron filler with dearest bloods:
That at the waning of the green one
Herne will dance to return the sun -
Antlers aloft, dressed to the greening,
Priests intoning, maidens keening.
Then come the Spring, the horns fall
As the deer lays its head to velvet
And the sun takes lengthier time to set.
Let all rejoice - in warmth is born the fawn
The carnyx played, the brightest colours worn.

THE THIRD TRUTH

Beware the criminals and the evil
Threatening the even level of things -
The heavenly rhythms in cycle,
The ordered radiance the sky sings -

Beware intruders of our shire oak marks:
Stranger enter not at all or with dread -
Deep in the forest hung with captive torques
Our god will deck his horns with your half-dead.

There oak and holly are garlanded in sacrifice
With captives hanging as fruit for cropping:
Our druid priest invoking plenty thrice
As the cauldron fills with vein-bled sapping

Each year of flesh-fed growth the axe arrests
Felling the cross tree like an antler crown
The branches laying down their hallowed guests
Interred to rest as the woodlands' own.

Where lightning strikes the forks at first are bare
And galls will form where the bark is broken
The mistletoe will root and prosper there
With our chieftain's daughter's sash in token.

At summer's start our maidens dance their dance
When our life-tree is born again as its greening swells
Take care not to feed its roots in grave mischance.
As the sun-deer kneels to the green one's spells.

Bow deeply then to the Ever-Changing -
Horn-crowned, broken-noose / torque-holding:
He who may grasp death's serpent's writhing
Where the wolves await the carcass tithing.

THE LAST TRUTH

Men and women have three natures:
A form which warms the earth
A force which challenges the heavens
And a shade or mist or wraith
Whose stories, songs and poetry
Tell our best thoughts in words.

And there are paths and ways
That lead to understanding
For the great truth is that order
Is divine - and that the wayfarer
Must leave imprints heading home
That those who follow may find.

History, mystery and immediacy
Define us.

The first tells of stories
And sagas, the greatness of some
And the struggles of the commoners.
The second tells of fear of death,
Of the vast beauty of the night sky,
Of the need to cry out with humility
And the need above all for love.
The third tells of the life we live
Hand guarding hand, step by step
Where the wagon makes its way
Where the wheel grinds the knife.