The Priestess

The Priestess

The season of the leaf compounds my gloom,
and alone I overlook a rusted wood;
where wolves and witches haunt the feral fume -
there, I, gaunt and grieving go in cloak and hood.

Should crimson eve beget a blacker night,
or man-fed crows incant the fatal word,
as hollow as the moaning, wind-wept height
would my mantic, lune-ward oaths yet go unheard.

O! all who wander fen and hemlocked firth!
I beg my sorrow: Seed the sable mere!
For the virgin, dead, that strangled love at birth,
I court the lichen-shades and wasting year.

Ferments from the alban-bone I smear;
in copper charms I seal the skin of toad;
but no specters of the swollen grave come near,
nor fairy-lamps to fog the mountain road.

The poisoned wells and fern-fells my abode,
all dappled rue to hue an earthless bride -
no mortal warmed by sun or saintly ode,
but a Priestess whom the day-star hath denied!

Below a willow-stone in birchen glade,
she’ll tend the rubied wounds of midnight boar,
and bleed my gaping madness down her blade
to spice with ebon pine and potioned gore.

Branching antlers blackened by the moon.
She’ll raise a hemic rune to Saturn’s tide,
and dance forgotten frosts a faded tune -
a Priestess with her arms flung wide!

She’ll press a lazar-lip to reindeer flute:
on azure-hip a spell of snow and light.
The winter’s white lament, an ashen root -
a Priestess wearing nothing but the night.