GREETINGS CARDS
All cards have printed poem inside.
Poems by Hugh Lupton, Images by Liz McGowan
£1.50 each
The Hodening Hoss, the Marbury Dun,
old Bone-face the deathless am I,
heavy with foal two thousand years,
bridled with sorrow,
saddled with fear,
I canter through pastures of tremble and quake,
I gallop the track between sleep and awake
seeking the deep of welcome
and stint for my tears.
Let me in!
The Mare-headed Queen, the Mari-Lwyd,
I was mother of all the herds.
ten thousand years my shining foals,
bridled with starlight,
saddled with gold,
leapt the divide between living and dead,
quickened the year with each toss of the head,
galloped the deep of beauty
and never grew old.
Let me in!
But Mother of God, the Mary Mild,
the pregnant Maiden came,
bursting with Jehovah seed
she entered my stable
and cried out her need.
With ropes I was dragged from the birthing straw,
aching with foal I was heaved to the door,
swapping warmth for bitter weather
and birth of a rival creed.
Let me in!
And now I am nightmare, I am rattling womb,
the Uffington wraith I’ve become,
forced into darkness you’ve made me a fiend,
bridled with shadow,
saddled with scream,
from window to window traversing the night,
my face in your glass in a shudder of light,
seeking that deep of welcome
befitting a Queen.
Let me in once again,
let me in!
In parts of South Wales the Mari-Lwyd (Grey Mare) is still carried from house to house between Christmas and Twelfth Night. She is a be-ribboned mare’s skull, and will only be let into the house if the company carrying her can outwit the inmates in a riddling contest. The legend behind the custom is that Mari-Lwyd was cast out of the Bethlehem stable into the cold night to make room for another Mary to give birth to a more prestigious child, ever since she has roamed the world searching for a place to give birth to her colt.
This oaken vault -
with spiralling psalms
and old constellations
of murmured prayer
and all the circling stations
of the years held high
in its timbered hold -
will fall open to sky
that once was acorn
dropped and sown
seven generations grown
until split and sawn
became table, cradle,
boat, bedstead, beam…
and, lifted high,
this wooden sky
that is a door shut tight
six hundred years
on the deep night,
and will one day, far
beyond our watch,
fall open and catch
the countless stars
in its splintered height
and remember then
the felled woods
before they fell
and how they stood,
and those beneath
who, looking up, beheld
the sky and all its lights
in bough, branch, leaf.
Derwen is the Welsh word for oak, it is also the root of the word ‘door’
