timeripple | his shattered weapons glittered/the star gazed down

Another Saturday night, another poetry weekend gone by. I spent most of eight hours today doodling foxfish and walrus eagles and gilled werethingies. Had I been in other company, I would have spent at least some of that time arguing that at least half the songs in Oliver! are about prostitution. (What? They totally are!)

But at least K and I improvised a Buffy A-Z poem on the way back from lunch. It had rhymes and everything!

Also, it is freezing. Whyyyyy. Here, have another seasonal-appropriate poem.

“The Warrior of Winter”

He met the star his enemy.
They fought the woods leafless.
He gripped his enemy.
They trampled the fields to quag.
His enemy was stronger.
A star fought against him.

He fought his losing fight
Up to the neck in the river.
Grimly he fought in gateways,
He struggled among stones.
He left his strength in puddles.
The star grew stronger.

Rising and falling
He blundered against houses.
He gurgled for life in ditches.
Clouds mopped his great wounds.
His shattered weapons glittered.
The star gazed down.

Wounded and prisoner
He slept on rotten sacking.
He gnawed bare stalks and turnip tops
In the goose’s field.
The sick sheep froze beside him.
The star was his guard.

At dawn he woke white
Past moving or speaking.
His wounds stuck bleak as blades.
Icicles barred his eyes.
A crow was watching him.
The star had conquered.

With bones like frozen plumbing
He lay in the blue morning.
His teeth locked in his head
Like the trap-frozen fox.
But he rejoiced a tear in the sun.
Like buds his dressings softened.

(Ted Hughes, Season Songs)

Huh. Maybe my problem with studying poetry is that everything I like is some combination of: in another language, completely opaque, or totally depressing!

If you have any favorite poems (eta: or songs!) about supernatural stuff, I’d love to know about them. Any language welcome! I’m looking at anything, from Eurydice and Orpheus (please tell me Ovid wrote about them! he must have!) to “Goblin Market” to the Lorelai to the YA vampire poetry anthology that doesn’t yet exist but I’m sure it’s only a matter of time.