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A guided meditation inspired by poetry.
For my personal daily card draw I have my meditation and prayer cards shuffled in with my oracle deck. Today, this card came up. I thought it was interesting and appropriate, with all the thinking and writing I have been doing about the Cailleach and Bride. At the winter solstice, this card felt particularly appropriate, with the short days, and so on. However, it feels equally appropriate now, at Imbolc, with its theme of the natural cycles of death and rebirth in nature and in our lives. Looking at the cycles of nature and of the seasons we can all have certainty of rebirth to come.
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I was not aware of Dylan Thomas' poem until I heard it quoted by the great Irish writer and philosopher John Moriarty. The sound of his voice rolling the lines forth, drawing out the "o" in the word "no" ... "They shall have stars at elbow and feet, and death shall have nooooo dominion" was both touching and felt like a sort of wake-up call. A call to hope and faith.
John was a man who had experienced the utter demolition of his faith, but had gone on to explore what can only be described as "the meaning of life" in minute, patient detail. He did this via a process at once deeply personal and yet universal -- through immersing himself in nature to an almost hermetic degree, through exploring the mythology not only of the Irish, but of many other cultures. He emerged from this, toward the end of his life, with a spirituality of great depth and breadth -- not always easy for his readers to nail down, and yet so enriching to behold. I will write more about his work in the future. |
And Death Shall Have No Dominion
And death shall have no dominion.
Dead man naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.
And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.
And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.
~ Dylan Thomas
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