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New In the Store: 2011 Poetry Calendar
[Poetry Chaikhana] Taliesin - A Poem for the Wind
Here's your Daily Poem from the Poetry Chaikhana --
A Poem for the Wind By Taliesin English version by Robert Williams
Guess who it is.
 / Photo by nikko russano / |
| ============ Thought for the Day: No one gets to heaven ============ | Here's your Daily Music selection --  Vas In the Garden of Souls |
Hi Omss -
Scholars question whether Taliesin was a historical person or more of an archetypal figure of Welsh lore. Traditionally Taliesin is said to have been a poet-seer who lived sometime around the 6th century in post-Roman occupied Wales. It's difficult to say which of Taliesin's poems, if any, were actually composed by the historical figure (if he actually was a historical figure). Bardic poetry was not traditionally written down, but passed through the generations orally. The poetry attributed to Taliesin was only written down and gathered together centuries later, probably in the 13th century.
His name, Taliesin, means "shining brow" or, alternately, "great value" (tal, meaning both forehead and worth).
One legend is told of Taliesin in which he stole the "liquid mead of poetry" from a powerful sorceress. The sorceress chased him through a contest of transformations, Taliesin changing form, to be matched by the woman. Taliesin finally assumes the form of a grain of wheat and the sorceress, becoming a hen, swallows him, only to give birth to him as a baby in resurrected form. She took the baby, sewed him in a leather sack, and tossed him into the ocean. A prince rescued him and named the baby Taliesin because of his "shining brow."
This is, of course, a highly charged symbolic story. The sorceress is often identified with Ceridwen, the dark Goddess of death and rebirth, she who possesses the cauldron of inspiration that is also the night sky. The contest of transformations is an initiation process, the transformation of consciousness and identification with the multiplicity of forms of all life and the natural world -- only then is the mystic poet truly made ready to give voice to reality in verse. And the story of a child being thrown into the womblike water to be rescued by an adoptive parent is, of course, a metaphor for rebirth and initiation, variations of which appear everywhere from the Greek myths to the story of Moses.
Because of his legendary role as a bard and man of secret wisdom, Taliesin has sometimes been equated with the Merlin, the archetypal wizard of Arthurian tales.
The poems that come down to us in such works as the Llyfer Taliesin (Book of Taliesin) express a shamanic perception of the world. The poems are evocations and praises, often taking the reader along with the speaker through a series of transformations that lead to an awareness of unity.
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This is more than a poem in the common sense; it is an evocation, a summoning. Taliesin's words are chant-like, a driving, building rhythm of attributes. As he names these qualities, notice that he is also taking us through a series of transformations that lead to an awareness of unity.
Like a shaman in the great primal traditions, the bard is calling forth the presence of the Eternal within our awareness, using the wind as a metaphor.
Why the wind? The wind, like "the Great God" who created it, is powerful, covering everything, yet it is formless and intangible. It is "without flesh, without bone..." It is ancient before time, "Created before the Flood," and it is eternal, "It will not be older, it will not be younger, / than it was in the beginning."
To some readers, the following lines may seem like a fierce vision of the Divine:
He is bad, he is good.
He is yonder, he is here,
he will disorder.
He will not repair what he does
We must understand that these words do not proclaim a god or force of arbitrary actions, one that is alternately "bad" and "good." Instead, this is the great vision of the Divine beyond the duality opposites. "He is bad, he is good." Everything flows from this all pervading force, and it is only the limited vision of the mind that defines it as sometimes "good" or sometimes "bad." This is a vision of grand wholeness that shatters our limited notions of morality and opposites. This is shown by the many other lines where contrasts are brought into unity: "He is yonder, he is here... He is wet, he is dry... He is loud-voiced, he is mute."
The "disorder" is the overturning of our limited perception that divides reality into separate units of beings/objects/meaning, to be replaced by a living, fluid Oneness. To one still entranced by the illusion of duality, that sounds like chaos, "disorder." But, when that nondual awareness reveals itself, "He will not repair what he does," for it is already complete. It is the false order created in the mind that must be repaired.
Bold, primal, a soul confronting the great adventure...
Ivan
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Ivan M. Granger's original poetry, stories and commentaries are Copyright © 2002 - 2010 by Ivan M. Granger.
All other material is copyrighted by the respective authors, translators and/or publishers.
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