Note on The Wild Hunt : I wrote this on Anzac Day, Saint Mark's Day for Australia and New Zealand is a day to remember those fallen in battle, particularly those New Zealand and Australians who were involved in the Gallipoli campaign. Traditionally, but not deliberately, Anzac Day is a  day of anguish in my household. It is also, this year, part of Easter  and very close to the ancient feast of Samhein. Part of the way things  are, and perhaps always have been. As I walked in my garden on this rainy morning I found the small pottery face the Green Man had fallen from his tree with the leaves, and had broken. Dies Irae ? Day of Trembling. 
The Wild Hunt
 

The God was broke on the path
under the trembling trees
when I looked, like fallen leaves
were the pieces of his face
and his golden eyes wept,
like an ancient thing, his wildness
in the wet, melted,
only the wild mind stirred
near the temple grove.
He came down, he came down
and he died young, like so many
other young men, and wild,
bent his neck to the yoke,
he pulled hard, like so many
other young men.
They lay down like leaves
in an ancient land,
the rage of wind in the night
like an ancient thing, their wildness
wearied the living, so they sat
mending their kit, mothered
the dying, while the machines
scythed them down.
He came down, he came down
and he died young, like so many
other young men, and wild,
bent his neck to the yoke,
he pulled hard, like so many
other young men.
and his golden eyes wept
in the dark of the rain
the moonlight glistened with tears.
The old men pass muster,
they drink and they sup,
they parade in their medals and might,
they decide, they decide
who shall bend to the yoke,
they remember their youth with their stride.
but he lay at the cross roads
and bled in the dark
like a leaf in the night
he shuddered and died,
like so many young men,
on the hill.

One rose up, he rose up,
One of so many young men,
one rose from the dead
rose up wild from the dark
and he rode, and he rode,
and he turned in the wind

the voices of mothering loss
and the whispers of pain
curled round his wild hunt
in the dark.



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(C) Copyright St. Mark's Day, 2000
Alys Thorpe
All Rights Reserved