Wilde Jaeger
Bared teeth and rattling windows
Gravedirt footprints – misty mounds
They open – yawning wide.
“How do you do,Good Neighbour?
Not seen you in an age.
With your bone and your dust and your leaf-mould breath
Walking the old Corpse Ways.”
“How do you do, Child of Skin?
With your hide corpse-blue
And your heart so red,
Beating a drum to call to the Dead”
In deepest dark ‘neath windy Tree
Roots reach down to ancient womb
And in that Cave squats Sleeper
Now awake, with lambent eye
And fierce grin
Of War and Wolf and Eagle.
The bones are thrown,
Those runes of wood
Gleaming, risted, with reddest blood.
And up He comes
Hand over Hand
Rides the Tree close – Flesh to Bark
Freezing Figure of the Dark.
Dare you, to dream of rood, of rod?
The coming of a Hidden God
Behind the Cross – from days of Eld?
Your shadow now –
The Spear is seen –
Mystery reaches out
From behind the Screen
To pierce the back,
Sets river to flow
From the source that no man knows
Arise again, now newly dead
Raise your shaggy, hoary
Awful head
And look upon the serried ranks
The armies, the bards
The bands of war
All tightly bound
To the Master of Awe
Now kin and cult by scarlet draught
We listen to the ravens laugh
And beat their wings.
For ’tis time to ride
Tis time to loose –
By the cord and by the noose –
The Fury ‘pon the world.
And in the night
With howl, with song
With deepest roar
We come a-knocking at your door
We beat on wood , metal and play on bone
Our voices are the deathly groan
That sets you to shiver
And to shake
Keep your vigil – keep the Wake.
We feast, we drink,
We dance and sing,
Oaths we make on the Drighten’s Ring
Will you come join us, will you come play
In the Endless Night that brings forth the Day?