Tuesday, 23 December 2008

• Currently Christmas in Wales: A Homecoming By Jane Maas, Michael Maas see related

  Hiraeth

  Look, look, the dusk is growing! My branches lofty are taking root....Can't hear with bark of bats, all them lifeying waters of. Ho, talk save us! My foos won't moos. I feel as old as yonder elm. A tale told of Shaun or Shem? All Livia's daughtersons. Dark hawks hear us. Night! Night! My ho head halls. I feel as heavy as yonder stone. tell me of John or Shaun? who were Shem and Shaun the living sons or daughters of? Night now! Tell me, tell me, tell me elm! Night night! Telmetale of stem or stone. Beside the rivering waters of, hitherandthithering waters of. Night!

  ~ James Joyce, Finnegans Wake

   

  Thoughts from the zig-zag tree.

   

  Hiraeth, she thinks, while stirring her Highland Grogg and dreaming of counting the fairy steps at St. Govans.

  Hiraeth.

  She drinks the scent of maple and finishes her bacon sandwich, turning to the sugared and sprinkled Christmas tree.

  Hiraeth.

  Nadolig Llawen. And a happy new year too. There are no tears unless we have learned to love something, somewhere, and long for it. At my age, loving and longing seem very much the same. And the magic that bridges them, lies (symbolically anyway) beneath the stones at Beddarthur - a secret only the taleweavers can tell. The holy place where the King lies holding the foundations of His world, disallowing their cracking. Hiraeth. I feel it now. The chief cornerstone. The star of St. David. The secret symbol of the shouting news. Of the sacred, the Stone Hinge. Stone, unmoving. Hinge, time rests. On Him. The cosmic precipice. Swinging back and forth like a door that is forever open.

  Hiraeth.

  Bring to me, she prays, St. Govan’s steps - and secrets. Bring me home, someday to Wales, and if not there, then There, where the True King sits, but never sleeps. And waits. Waits to move the mountain. Waits for his ravens, bound and shackled, to be set free. But if possible, to Wales, where the sun-King and cross-King meet.

  Happy Christmas, Nadolig Llawen, me. Happy Christmas, Nadolig Llawen, you. Happy Christmas as you find yourself looking for home and discovering that place you already knew - somehow - because it is in your skin, waiting for you to come back from wherever you’ve gone.

  She sniffs, and tries very much to stop the sniffing. The table of Californian women, complaining about snow and cold, stare. It is useless.

  Hiraeth.

  She stands and muffles her tears as best she can in the downy curtain that cradles her coffee-house chair, pretending to admire the teardrop-baubled chandelier.

  Hiraeth.

  She gathers her coat and out the door, fare-welling the book she will not open again until next December, knowing she can never shake the Country of her Birth. It is stuck too fast. She teeters through the icy road on tip-toe, aware that emotion of the deepest kind is pitiable in this type of weather, like a VW attempting to pillage seven feet of snow.

  Hiraeth, she calls. I’m coming. I hear you, there. The family, Lewis, I’m coming. God knows I’m coming.

  And by the Lion, she’s going. Someday. Happy Christmas forever. And a Happy New Creature, amen.

   

  When you are old and gray and full of sleep
  And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
  And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
  Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

  How many loved your moments of glad grace,
  And loved your beauty with love false or true;
  But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
  And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

  ~ William Butler Yeats

   

   

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