Can I recount my genealogy? Does it matter? Can I trust the samples, the documents, the pigments? The culture I was born to, is it a culture? Are we people? Is the severance from the past understandable? Does it matter? What matters? What ties me to my ancestors? My old people are buried widely. Do they go back to Africa? Am I not a black man whose pigment has faded living so north and now so south? Who are my old people? I hear myself say many names. Norse and Norman raiders. Welsh Celts. Gaelic Scots and Irish. Luddites from Yorkshire. I’m far from home, far from the Mother Country I know home to be. A land raided by savage folk akin to me. Are my ancestors so wretched I cannot hear the songs of the goddess here? Am I? Does black mould infect the psyche of my people? Does cheese and herb? Tesco’s? Are my cultural ancestors my forthcomings? I come from pot and axe people, assemblers of stone, cord makers and carvers. Why did the paternal saint of Ireland sever the heads of animists, banish serpents, when Christ before Rome an animist himself? I’m travelling too fast for pilgrimage. Time cuts. Buses and trains in this old Mother Country are fleecing my little family. Fear in the eyes of cars passing, our erect thumbs, smiling roadside. Is it my beard and missing teeth that scare? Is it my old woollen hat? Why are we such freaks courting empty seats? Is it not just economy but connection we seek? Is fear nothing other than a buttress built from mistrust? From severance? Inside these four-wheeled cities a false provenance sits. What heritage of walling away life possesses me? Would I pick myself up?
The fort on Inis Mor in the Aran Islands where Patrick spoke out the first iteration of this poem is named after Aonghus mac Óg (or Aengus), a god of love, youth, and poetic inspiration from the Tuatha Dé Danann – the mythological race of supernatural beings in early Gaelic tradition. It is claimed to be the oldest stone fort in Western Europe.
Nothing is more than a sacred fire in the forest..🔥
Hearing that, J-M! 🙏🏽❤️
The alienation of our present culture is not just palpable, it’s a material, structurally embedded foundation of it’s working. There is no profit without exploitation.
You have come to the epicentre of modern empire, the birthplace of a military industrialism which dispossessed and colonised it’s own people before anyone else. It is the inventor of the neo liberal market era and it has denuded it’s flora and fauna beyond any other on this continent. A cruel paternalism rules this land and subjugates the mother. It is a bleak place and you are brave to traverse it.
I hear and feel every word of your poem, the little empire of the car that effaces us all.. You probably know what I’m gonna say, that the pots and axes, the stones for shelter and space – are for the feasting and the festival – and it is there we whisper and shout, and dance and sing the name of the goddess. I wish you find one along your way to ease the load of your knowing. Love to you brother and to Meg and Woody.
Yes, ‘the feasting and the festival,’ gathering by fire. Thanks for your loving, non-fixing and loving words, dear brother.
The Aran islands are amazing aren’t they, soil forged from seaweed, sand & animal manure I believe, by humans.
It’s hard to get to the good heart of the people when you’re travelling so fast, standing on the curb sides looking in. It is there, I’m sure you know, just a bit buried by all the modern concerns. I’m glad you’re finding solace in nature
Thanks Katy!
Hullo Fam,
If you are still able to link it together, roaming along the Hebredean /Hebridean Way might be magnificent for you.. Ask the Oracle (a k a Google) for more info.
Love always all ways
Iona
Thanks Iona! ❤️
plus Renatus! I do recommend.. https://www.knowyourself.land/
there is a, September event..
🙏🏽
Such a beautiful, gentle heartfelt reading of perfection.
Thank you.
I am deeply saddened that you are not welcomed on the road.
I love all that you and your precious family do.
With love Christine
We had three lovely lifts on our first day, Christine, though few since. It’s the luck of the game. It’s the same in parts of Australia. In Mullumbimby every second car will stop, in most places in Oz however, the same looks of scandal we’re receiving here, applies. It surprises us in Ireland. We thought the goddess was more alive, but people are probably just wearing the worry of the price of living.
severed and severance stand out to me.
the loss you’re experiencing has left a brutal,angry and shameful wound.
these last few decades have exacerbated the culture of mistrust leaving a vulnerability and a vacuum.
i wonder if thumbs out and smiles might be a painful reminder. or an invitation to something else best pushed back down.
but pushed down can be dormant,just waiting,and not dead.
Mmm, beautiful Sean! Thank you
Brave and beautiful, thank you
Thanks Samantha!
Possessing no beard & missing no teeth, it’s still very hard for most to stop when I’m on the side of the road with my thumb up.
It will get worse before it gets better, Eka, when our species will learn again to be more helpful and less fearful.