I want to lie down in the field as your May Queen
to give of my waters
to sustain you
to protect you
from drought
and the harshness
of
the beating sun
My flower is in-bloom
and you are the
honeybee
My loins moisten
and I am ripe
and you are
luster-whites
tearing at me
My eggs are painted
and hidden
for you to
find
My heart is exposed
and pounding
throbbing
beating
for you
to come
again
All pieces are newly crafted and posted shortly after in adherence to the rules of the challenge. All the photos are mine unless otherwise stated.
The detail shot of the oil painted flowers is actually from an unfinished painting, I rather like it in the unfinished state.
Entry for Day 17 of 100 Days of Poetry Challenge by @d-pend.
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For those who did not bother to look it up, the title is Irish for "May Queen."
"May Queen" is an interesting topic for me to discuss, not having been raised and not having lived in a country with Pagan or Christian roots. Funny, Israel, which is where Christianity originated and which has Christian history from the time of the Crusades is not actually a country with Christian roots. So it goes when your roots go deeper.
And I hear you say, "But Guy, you know all these other cultures, and their mythologies, like the Greek and Norse mythologies!" but somehow May Queen is far too young for my cultural knowledge. So I looked it up some.
And yes, "new" is a very relevant concept here. May Queen. So you ended up writing a spring poem even so. Though May Day is a borderline case, as a spring celebration that also celebrates the coming of summer. Whatever. It's a holiday to celebrate life and renewal.
And if you look up "May King," or the theories that the May Queen herself used to be sacrificed as well, then renewal that is tied twice-over to death. And if we look at the more modern revisions that tie May Queen to Mary, and you realize that Easter is the Christianized version of the rebirth of the Chief God, or the God of Summer, then we can tie it once more to spring, and to death and rebirth.
I did quite like the allusion to Easter, I must say. In Judaism, eggs are a symbol of grieving, and in other cultures, of life. "Painted eggs" with relation to what we know today, is a symbol of fertility, of eggs being painted as a metaphor for impregnation, or of bringing life. This plays off of the May Queen as a symbol of purity. Pure white, she wears, which gets painted, with life. The land that winter grasped in its cold white hold, being painted with vegetation, and newbirths.
Who is the poem addressed to? Who is this "you"? And there are many options here, that you can tie to one another either as one being metaphorical for another, or that one leads to another. It could be the essence of life and creation itself, and you saying you will protect and nurture the creative forces within you, till they impregnate your mind with inspiration and the art itself, sheltering it from the coldness of the world, from the overbearing nature that goes from not letting things to grow, to where they end up blasting it till it shrivels.
A flower in bloom, and the bee, a patient yet diligent worker, not something that is forced.
You tend to him, sheltering him from the sun, and giving him waters.
And it could be love itself, that is fragile in its infancy, tender-hearted, and in need of protection, which then comes back to impregnate your heart, your flower that is in bloom, that comes to your exposed heart, to gift you not just love, but inspiration.
The death aspect of giving of yourself is very strong in this piece. You are ripe, and you are eaten, you are consumed. You give of yourself, of your waters. Then you give of your very flesh. This is both a very sensual metaphor, following your moistening loins, to not just sex, but to giving life, as you are mother to the world, to spring and all of its many creations, and also a sign that perhaps you are giving too much, of sacrifice. Which ties us again to Mary, whom we can see as another "Mother Goddess" stand-in, giving of herself to the world, and to God, whom she protected while he was child, and he ate life off her, as all children do. And Jesus too, who gave of his flesh and blood (here "water") to sustain us all, after the long winter of unbelief.
And the piece ends with the knowledge all celebrations of winter-death hold within - that winter will come again. Only for spring and summer, and a new celebration of life, to come again.
A very tender piece, and that image at the end is so very fitting to go with it as well. Seeds to give life amidst the red of spent life. Life one gives in order to encourage the seeds to spread and take root.
A lovely piece, of giving, of reaching out, which also touches on what @carolkean said of one of my pieces, where it also says what the other side gives you - as you give it life, so he gives you life, new life. You two live together, and when one gives, the other grows richer off it, to be able to give back.
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when it comes to norse paganism Mary is associated with Freya all the flora and fauna once named for freya was then attributed to Mary. The Norse goddess Ostara is the goddess of the spring Equinox, her chariot is drawn by rabbits and both she and freya receive red painted eggs as sacrifice, which is a symbol of fertility. This is where the easter bunny comes from and the weird Idea Germans have that the easter bunny lays eggs. The egg and bunny tradition transferred over into christianity. In Russian orthodoxy the eggs are still red and you eat them on graves to celebrate resurrection, or at least my family did.
The May queen comes from the celtic tradition and is often a version of Bridgid. A lot that was associated with her as well was usurped by the christian church and passed on to Mary. Bealtaine and Ostara fall on different dates Ostara on on spring Equinox , Beltane on the night before the 1st of May.
The May king was only sacrificed if the land did not produce crops or the season was bad. The queen
is never sacreficed she is the one who sacrifices the king who is both husband and son, and trough who he is resurrected. Both king and queen were chosen for exceptional talent and beauty out of their communities. For the year of their "reign" they were fed the best food and received gift and patronage from their villages. If harvest was good they just returned to their normal lives after harvest and a straw proxy of the king was given over to the fire. If it was bad blood was seen as needed to restore the fertility of the land and the queen acting as emissary and human representation of the land takes his life to restore her vitality. It is thought that very early pagans killed the king regardless of harvest but little is really known as celts carry their tradition by word of mouth not written word, or did at that time. Any children conceived by the queen during that year were seen as lucky and touched by divinity. Any children fathered by the king the same but not in equal measure if it was not the queen who was the mother, but let's say the guy was really popular with the ladies cause everyone wanted a super baby :P
Beltane is is not a festival of sacrifice it is one of fertility. It is Samhain where sacrifices were made and the veil was said to be thin and the cycle ends. It begins again at the festival of lights and runs over into yule.
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I just do not have the time to respond right now but I am so glad you cleared up the May Queen's role so that I did not have too.
In a way, if this piece is confused with her as the sacrifice I am sad, as it seems a failure. I forget that not everyone is aware of these things (I was raised in an Irish house). My piece is about the fertility (which seems obvious, and all the juicy sub-text to be played with) of the fields as the May Queen is in symbol of -- The Great Rite and the sacrifice of the seed as she lays in waiting, the old cycle now nourishment for the new. Of course I wove into this piece layers of meaning. ;)
You and Guy really have a fantastic thread going here. <3
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Pieces say more than the author intended. Perhaps more than they knew they meant, at times! And such is the nature of metaphors, of mythic allusions. They don't convey all you wish them to, and they add on some more that you never intended.
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Thanks for that! Though Beltane is tied to the May Day, it is not the only such occasion, and others have had sacrifice tied to them, either before or after the May Day naming has began. Wikipedia is full of that stuff.
It's risky to assume that the tradition is identical in all places, or across all times. It's rarely the case with mythic traditions that span centuries and an entire continent.
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Oh I know. I was very active in my youth in the norse and celtic pagan circles. During that time ordo templi orientis, the church of satan and the OTO tried to recruit me.As a child in jamaica I was exposed to Jamaican Voodoo as someone in our household was a priestess unbeknownst to my parents. So I have a pretty good knowledge base on the subject. Or religion in general as I was once very much interested in all that and it was once my foundation ...
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Metaphorically rich and sensual, Mamadini. Great job:)
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Thank you, dear. :)
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"Spring is here again
Reproductive glands"
" Bruises on the fruit
Tender age in bloom"
~K. Cobain lyrics from In Bloom
I love the similarities <3
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