Poet's Nook: "Holy Elixir" by Kate Tempest

 

  

 

 I touch the beginning Animating animals and tree Gods Scratching out legends in cave walls The days pour down into nights as we watched We matched stars with peaks We fought beasts We caught food for the feast And we walked to a breast to receive the bound wheat     The grass Black and strange As we razed plains to ash We laid claims Exchanged grains And made pacts And we clashed And we strained And the rains lashed The young maids were brave but they were made to lay flat The old ways were too ingrained to make the reins snap We laid traps    We gave our names back to the Saints We sang out thanks and complaints We burned fat Arranged bones in the flames Each bird a great catch Our songs were spells And our spells were plain facts    She laid down in the road where the people go by And declared herself willing to try I laid down beside her But all I could see were the feet as they walked over me That's when she told me: "I was Holy Elixir" She said "I thought I knew the world but it was only a picture"    She said "We're all written in the holiest scripture It's just we're living in this time that says no inhibitions Get yours, keep going, the distance, no limits And don't bother protesting because nobody listens Besides All your solutions dissolve under scrutiny And you can't stand a note of derision Instead seek approval to justify your existence Have opinions but have no resolve or conviction Just keep your head down Breathe the fumes and indulge your addictions Routine is healthy, ignore the affliction The cost to the soul and the constant constriction Don't consider too closely, have no intermission Keep throwing your fists in slow repetition Most of us manage, what makes you so different? Now, you seem a bright spark Go ahead, take the road with the pilgrims Head for the temples of democracy Freedom, growth, reason, liberty, hope But don't pay attention to what's hanging from the rope"    She said "Decode the language Unfold the symbols Untold disciples got lost in the hillside Following intellect, they let go of wisdom And now they'll tell you the soul's a closed system They sacrificed instinct to phony ambition And now what they hold in their fist has become all that there is But total existence needs meaning and myth Many misjudged the way and got lost in the mist Your loneliness is the symptom, not the sickness"    The moment her lips said "peace" My peace melted I became a memory I felt myself peel I was atoms Magnesium Calcium I was real She said "We are born of collision We are divisions of a bigger vision And yet We run around like hamsters Spinning the wheel Spinning the wheel Spinning the wheel"    I was on my knees then Begging for pardon I was old and clothed in white garments In a vast red desert Where the rocks were dark blue and varnished And a voice said "This is the garden Now you better start sowing Or there won't be a harvest"    I came to Under a domed roof The light was cold and clear and fragmented There was people, moving I watched them I saw a muscle of school girls performing I saw the ticket woman massaging the small of her back And the young gent, neat as a crease in his work clothes And the light, light as breath on the dirty, old track