The Headless Cross at Elsdon

by Brett Rutherford

     after a dirge by Robert Surtees

Her lover died at the Nine-Stone Rig

from seven brothers’ rage;

nine the arrows that shower’d down,

arms, heart, and throat, and eye

a-shiver with the hate-fletched shafts,

a-quake with their envenom’d darts,

a double death of blood and poison,

all this to avenge a virginity lost!

They shot him dead at the Nine-Stone Rig,

beside the cursèd cross of Thor

(false Dane who absolution shunned),

a fitting place to die.

They left him lying in his blood,

red on green moss, black on brown earth.

The fled and vowed to kill again

if her illicit union spawn’d.

A Lapland wind, a raven dark,

lapped at the blood and plucked the eye,

the one blue orb unarrow’d,

and brought it to the lady fair.

She fainted, for she knew that eye,

beneath which she had loved and sigh’d.

And then she summon’d her menials

to search the wet, cold ground for him.

They made a bier from broken boughs

of the birch and the aspen gray.

Nine arrows they broke and cast away

at the foot of the Headless Cross.

They bore him to Our Lady’s Chapel.

None dared to refuse his passing-in.

The lady arrived. Her servant brought

The azure eye in a silver chalice.

She placed the eye in the blacken’d hole

where once it had glistened and tear’d.

The other had but the stump of wood

where the unkindest dart of all

Had blinded him, and reft her soul.

They waked him there all day; by night

the tapers burned as monks and nuns

gave out heart-rending Requiems.

As they came at last to bear him off,

the lady threw her robes aside,

in favor of an ashen shift sleev’d

and collar’d with crimson and black.

With waters blessed from Our Lady’s well,

she bathed the corpse, and washed it clean

of the thrice-three poison’d wounds.

(Her wound only did she not regret).

She plaited a garland for on his breast,

and a garland for on his hair.

The raven upon her shoulder lit.

The Lapland wind made dark the room

As the tapers all flickered and died.

They rolled him in a winding sheet

     ah, lily-white it was! And as

the Virgin’s water had him blessed

No mark of blood appeared.

They bore him to a new-made grave,

and passing by the Chapel Garth

they paused to let the Gray Friars sing

in yet another Requiem. But where

would the lady bury her lover?

Not in the family crypt where bones

might still be ravaged by those

same seven brothers she now loathed!

Not in some crowded churchy ground

where twenty years hence they’d dig

and pile his bones with strangers’ skulls!

She chose the place, in dark of wood

where first they had met, o fatal spot!

a bower beneath a spreading beech.

In murk of midnight they buried him,

where the dew fell cold and still,

in windless fell of untrembling leaf

where the mists cling to the hill.

They dug his grave just a bare foot deep,

where she had happily laid with him:

see where the heather flower blooms,

and the moss and the lady-fern.

A Gray Frair stood upon that grave

and sang until the sun rose true,

another sings yet for the lover's soul

at the foot of the Headless Cross.

— Op. 1055 February 2, 2020.

Edith of Hilton and Harold the Dane

by Robert Surtees (Northumbrian poet and historian)

Another poem involving a romance with a were-raven came from the pen of Robert 
Surtees, a correspondent who supplied some fabricated ballads to Sir Walter Scott. 
This poem was included by Surtees, without attribution, in his History of Durham. 
The poet considers this to be a legend of the possible Danish ancestry for the Hilton 
family. The raven here is associated with Odin and his messenger ravens. Surtees 
observes, “It should, however, he recollected, to say nothing of Leda and such by-
gone times, that the Ascanian princess of Saxony sprung from the loins of a bear, 
and, which is more to the purpose, that the Staffords of Buckingham chose to 
descend from a white swan.”

His fetters of ice the broad Baltic is breaking,
In the deep glens of Denmark sweet summer is waking,
And, blushing amidst her pavilion of snows,
Discloses her chalice the bright Lapland rose.
Yet the leaves that the tempest has strewn on the ground
Are whirling in magical eddies around.
For deep in the forest where wild flowers are blushing,
Where the stream from its cistern of rock-spar is gushing,
The magic of Lapland the wild winds is hushing.
Why slumbers the storm in the caves of the north?
When, when shall the carrier of Odin go forth?

Loud, loud laughed the hags as the dark raven flew,
They had sprinkled his wings with the mirk midnight dew,     (1)
That was brushed in Blockula from cypress and yew.                (2)
     That raven in its charmed breast
     Bears a sprite that knows no rest —
     (When Odin’s darts, in darkness hurl’d,
     Scattered lightnings through the world;
     Then beneath the withering spell.,
     Harold son of Eric fell) —
     Till lady, unlikely thing I trow,
     Print three kisses on his brow —
Herald of ruin, death, and flight,
Where will the carrier of Odin alight?

What Syrian maid in her date-covered bower,
Lists to the lay of a gay troubadour?
His song is of war, and he scarcely conceals
The tumult of pride that his dark bosom feels;
From Antioch beleaguer’d the recreant has stray’d,
To kneel at the feet of an infidel maid;
His mail laid aside, in a minstrel’s disguise
He basks in the beams of his Nourjahad’s eyes.
Yet a brighter flower in greener bower,
     He left in the dewy west,
Heir of his name and his Saxon tower;
     And Edith’s childish vest
Was changed for lovelier’s woman’s zone,
And days and months and years have flown,
     Since her parting sire her red lips prest.

And she is left an orphan child
In her gloomy hall by the woodland wild;
A train of menials only wait
To guard her towers, to tend her state,
      Unlettered hinds and rude.                            (3)
Unseen the tear-drop dims her eye,
Her breast unheeded heaves the sigh,
And youth’s fresh roses fade and die
     In wan unjoyous solitude.

Edith, in her saddest mood,
     Has climbed the bartizan stair;                    (4)
No sound comes from the stream or wood,
     No breath disturbs the air.
The summer clouds are motionless,
     And she, so sad, so fair,
     Seems like a lily rooted there,
In lost forgotten loneliness.
A gentle breeze comes from the vale,
And a sound of life is on the gale,
And see a raven on the wing,
Circling around in airy ring,
Hovering about in doubtful flight —
Where will the carrier of Odin alight?

The raven has lit of the flag-staff high
     That tops the dungeon tower;
But he has caught fair Edith’s eye,
And gently, coyly, venturing nigh,
     He flutters round her bower;
For he trusted the soft and maiden grace
That shone in that sweet young Saxon face.
     And now he perched on her willow wand,
And tries to smooth his raven note,
And sleeks his raven coat,
     To court the maiden’s hand.
And now caressing and caress’d,
The raven is lodged in Edith’s breast;
’Tis innocence and youth that makes
In Edith’s fancy such mistakes;
But that maiden kiss hath holy power
O’er planet and sigillary hour;
The elvish spell has lost its charms,
And a Danish knight is in Edith’s arms;
And Harold, at his bride’s request,
His barbarous gods forswore,
Freya and Woden, and Balder and Thor;
And Jarrow with tapers blazing bright                 (5)
Hail’d her gallant Proselyte.

Footnotes
1 Mirk. Murky, shadowed, obscure.
2 Blockula. Blockula is originally the same place as the island Blå Jungfrun, which was in old days called Blåkulla. Associated with the Swedish witch trials, a considerable lore grew up around Blockula as a gathering place of witches, where, in orgies with Satan, a variety of demonic creatures were spawned.
3 Hinds. Household servants (from the Middle English and Northumbrian).
4 Bartizan. An overhanging turret of a castle.
5 Jarrow. Town on the River Tyne in Durham County, home of the Venerable Bede.

From the forthcoming Poet's Press/ Yogh & Thorn edition, Tales of Terror: The Supernatural Poem Since 1800, Volume 3.

The Man Who Hated Trees

by Brett Rutherford

Stake through its heart, the sap-bled
tree grew ashen. Leafless, barkless,
squirrel-shunned, at last it was
          patently dead.
My Bonn Place neighbors wondered
     what manner of deviant
     could so impale
one of our dwindling row of sycamores,
our whispering rain-umbrellas,
our sparrow and robin high-rise
     low-income condominiums.

What manner of deviant
     to saw the branches last fall,
     then, angered at twig-break
     through this spring’s bark —
          the insouciant sucker growth
          attempting new sun-search —
to drive that railroad spike
into heartwood, cutting the xylem
and phloem course from roots
to yearning bud?
Did he snap those twigs off, too?
Does he harbor a death-wish
     for all of our loved trees?

One morning in summer the scream
     of chainsaw awakens us.
Two dog-ladies discover the amputee
     slices of trunk on the lawn,

stacked for the trash man,
     ham-steaks of tree-trunk.

We gather,
     hold hands,
          and count the rings.

Found in a notebook from c. 1975,
Weehawken, NJ.

March to the Scaffold (Marche au Supplice)

by Brett Rutherford

      after the music of Symphonie Fantastique of Berlioz

Today I die in Paris. City of demons and hideous women.

What faces, replete with mustaches and hairy warts;

and what noses, what puffed-out cheeks,

          what crenelated mouths!

How tall is the shaft of the guillotine?

          How tall is the spire of Notre-Dame? The same!

The immensity of my crime, the same !

The amputated veterans of the Grand Army,

          the shoeless orphans, the cripples,

          stand in line in the gutters.

The rosette window darkens, the gargoyles sneer and gossip,

          the blind organist plays the Dies Irae.

A muffled bell mourns me.

          Laugh, hunchback, laugh, as you call out my death!

The chorus girls from the Opera rush the tumbrel wagon

           of the condemned.

Among them floats the spectre of the one I loved.

They lift her. Her arms are bare,

          smeared with the cemetery’s black soil.

Stones they hurl at me, and excrement, and curses.

Their cruel missiles have broken my fingers.

          Ah! I shall not write again!

Wheels turn, the drumroll of the ceremony

          becomes louder to my ears.

Old friends of my youth

          somewhere are singing the Marseillaise,

               too late, too far away.

One "Ça ira" and the wigged judge

          would be the one to die, not me!

Oh, had I but loved the Just and the True,

          instead of her.

Ah ! The dread hour comes. The tumbrel stops.

          Rudely they push me forward.

I count the steps to the scaffold.

          Twelve, no, thirteen! Thirteen steps!

I wave away the priest.

          I pay no mind to the recitation of my crimes.

I demand to die in the Chinese manner:

          I will face the heavens.

Even the executioner shudders,

          but then he smiles and agrees.

How very novel! How like a poet!

The spectral woman faints with horror.

          My mother averts her eyes.

I see two vertical lines,

          an angle gleaming bright,

               some clouds.

Because I loved her,

          because she abandoned me,

               because she died —

Because —

           the blade! It descends!

Because —

          It descends!

Because I killed her. 

Ah!

Aujourd'hui je meurs à Paris.

     Ville des démons et des femmes hideuses!

Quels visages, remplis de moustaches et de verrues velues ;

     et quels nez, quelles joues gonflées, quelles bouches crénelées !

Quelle est la hauteur de l'arbre de la guillotine?

Quelle est la hauteur de la flèche de Notre-Dame? La même!

L'immensité de mon crime, la même!

Les vétérans amputés de la Grande Armée,

          les orphelins sans sabots,

          les estropiés, font la queue dans les gouttières.

La fenêtre rosace s'assombrit,

          les gargouilles ricanent et bavardent,

          l'organiste aveugle joue le Dies Irae.

Une cloche étouffée me pleure.

          Riez, bossu, riez, que vous appelez ma mort!

Les filles de choeur de l'Opéra se précipitent

          vers le chariot du condamné.

Parmi elles flotte le spectre de celle que j'aimais.

     Ils la soulèvent.

     Ses bras sont nus,

           enduit de terre noire du cimetière.

     Des pierres,

          des excréments

               et des malédictions, ils me lancent.

Les missiles cruels m'ont cassé les doigts.

          Ah! Je n'écrirai plus!

Les roues tournent, le tambour de la cérémonie

          devient plus fort à mes oreilles.

Quelque part, de vieux amis de ma jeunesse

          chantent la Marseillaise,

               mais trop tard, trop loin.

Un " Ça ira" et le juge sévère

          celui qui mourrait, pas moi.

Oh, si j'avais aimé le Juste et le Vrai,

          au lieu d'elle.

Ah! L'heure de la terreur arrive.

          Le tumbrel s'arrête.

          Ils me poussent brutalement en avant.

Je compte les escaliers jusqu'à l'échafaud.

          Il y en a douze, non, treize!

               Treize escaliers!

Je refuse le prêtre.

          À la récitation de mes crimes, je n'écoute pas.

J'exige de mourir à la chinoise :

           Je ferai face au ciel.

Même le bourreau frémit,

          mais ensuite il sourit et accepte.  

Quelle nouveauté! Comme un poète!

La femme spectrale s'évanouit d'horreur.

          Ma mère détourne les yeux.

Je voix deux lignes verticales,

          un angle brillant,

               quelques nuages.

Parce que je l'aimais,

          parce qu'elle m'a abandonné,

               parce qu'elle est morte,

    Parce que —

          la lame! Ça descend!

Parce que —

          Ça descend!

Parce que je l'ai tuée.

Ah !

Old Scholar Under Autumn Trees (Anniversarius 48)

Translated  by Brett Rutherford

     From a Chinese Painting and Poem by Shen Chou, 1470 CE.

Gone, gone, gone. Gone to the west
wind, the leaves have fled. Still, there is
sun, still some shade under half-
disrobed maples. I loosen
my collar, I just lean back
and read my book. No clock, no
appointments, all idleness.
It is a long book; I have
all the Autumn ahead
To read, or to gaze on up
at the sky that pulls on me.
Here below -- or on up there --
who knows what I shall do next?

Op. 1050, January 19, 2020, from a 2006 FB post.

As You Read This

by Brett Rutherford

You think you are alone.

I watch your hands

flash white

at turn of page,

follow your eyes

from line to line.

Hands do not blush,

the reading eye

cannot avert,

the mind

does not suspect

my omnipresence.

Counting the beat

your fingers trace

these lines.

You even whisper them

as though my ear

were intimate.

You never suspect

I dream of you,

touch back

your outreached consciousness.

Concealed amid typography,

sighing in each caesura,

intake of breath at every comma,

I am a boy in the shrubbery,

lover in moonlit garden,

a bare toe jutting

     amid the footnotes.

Though you be shy,

doe-wary and skittish,

I stalk this poem,
alert between letters.

Watch all you will

for hawk and hunter,

I am in and on the river

of word-flow.

Casting my net

   mid-ship between stanzas

I hope to catch you.

Op. 896, from 2017 noteboook

The Midnight Ibis

by Brett Rutherford

     after a watercolor by Riva Leviten

On this foggy night, any river
     could be the Nile
and that dark thing afloat
     cold be the crocodile
that let the Moses-basket
     pass on by,
and laughed about it still
     with weepless eye.

There is a hooked-head shape
     arc’d like a scythe
with one bright orb that might
     be the isolate ibis, lithe
and tomb-art motionless.

Or it might be nothing,
     a sight not solid
an unnamed form made up
     of arc and column,
now gray on white, now white
     on gray,
cloud-tuft, fog breath dispersed.
     Sometimes it is the eye
that thinks a thing -- sometimes
     it is the mind that sees!

Ibis! the very totem-form of Thoth,
who gave the art of writing to Ani
(the first known scribe), your beak
suggesting stylus on paper roll,
chisel on somnolent basalt, hand-wave
of words to outlive the burning stars.

Ibis! watcher! listener! father
of cartouche and hieroglyph,
unsmiling arbiter of line and rhyme.

Ibis thou swift messenger of dreams,
of waking-moment revelation
of the impossibly true or to-be-true
(Hermes to the blue-skied Greeks),
your truth that fleeting visions,

unless inscribed, are gone like fog,
word-foam on a tideless sea.

Op. 891

First draft Feb 9, 2017

Dance of the Witches' Sabbath - A New Translation

This poetic description of a Witches' Sabbath in a ruined monastery was published in 1825. Five years later, Hector Berlioz composed his Symphonie Fantastique, whose last movement is a depiction of a Witches' Sabbath, with church bells ringing out at midnight against a Witches' round dance. Did Berlioz read the Hugo poem? It is likely. Another Witches' Sabbath known at the time was that of Goethe in Part 1 of Faust.

The only other version of this poem I have found in English is inadequate, from almost 100 years ago -- one peek and I never looked at it again. I have done this in my own un-rhymed manner and I have embellished a bit, since this is after all my Gothic territory. The poem has a refrain which I repeated a few times. It can be omitted after the first two occasions if it becomes tiresome, or it could be replaced with a musical bridge passage (Berlioz?). So, this is a brand-new translation, made without reference to any other English version. There are no doubt a few excesses here that might horrify Hugo, or maybe he would smile.


by Brett Rutherford

          Translated and adapted
          from Victor Hugo’s La Ronde du Sabbat, 1825

Just as in a mystery, behold now
how the moon veils itself in cloud
before the black monastery’s walls!
Spreading its fright, the midnight spirit
passes, swaying twelve times where once
a bell tolled (no more!) in the unpeopled
belfry. Long resounding comes the noise,
the air shakes, the roll and rumble stifled
as if locked up beneath the bell itself.
A shadow, and silence falling — listen !

Who thrusts these clamors upon the quiet
night? Who casts these phantom lights?

Dear God! The ruined vaults, the jagged doors
seem to be enveloped by filaments of fire.

Do we not hear, where the boxwood branches dip
into the Holy Water, an agitated tide of waves,
a tiny troubled lake a-boil in its granite urn?

Commend our souls to those who look down
upon us! Down here, among the blue rays,
among the scarlet flames, with cries and songs,
with human sighs and inhuman barking,

now everywhere, waters, mountains, woods,
larvae, dragons, vampires and gnomes,
monsters whose hell dreams only phantoms,
the witch, set free from the deserted tombs,

her silver birch broom whistling through air,

Necromancers tiara’d with mystical caps
above whom cabalistic symbols glow,

the no-nonsense demons, the crafty goblins,
all welcomed by the jagged line of roof,
by the broken hinge of the abandoned gate,
children of de-sanctified waste places come;
they come right through, a thousand lightnings,
the airy gaps in the stained-glass windows.
They enter the old cloister as a swirling wave.

He stands amid them, Lucifer, he, their Prince,
his bull’s forehead concealed beneath
the high-capped miter of heavy iron.
The chasuble has veiled his diaphanous wings,
as on the crumbling altar he places his cloven foot.

O terror! Now they are singing, here in this place
where day and night the Eternal’s eye should watch!

Now hand or claw reaches out for its kindred —
or, horror to behold, for nothing like itself —
they join, the form the immense circle,
the Antipode to the Cross, the bottomless!

Like a dark hurricane, the whirling begins.

To the eye that could not encompass the whole,
each hideous guest appears in his turn;

Hell spins, it seems, within the darkness,
its dreadful Zodiac all emblems of death.

The wind-force makes all fly, no need for wings!
They are carried ‘round, and Satan conducts
the choral bursts of their beastly voices.

The dead
in their vaults below, if they could feel
beneath the paving stones, and hear this rout,

how they would tremble!

“Change partners randomly”

As the demon mass around him rolls,
Satan and his joyful minions
press in on the altar and the Cross.

It is the cardinal night of autumn

The hour is solemn.

From Satan’s fingers rise
the ancient flame that does not die,
that pale winged fluttering
fringed with the purple of kings —

The dead
in their vaults below, if they could feel
beneath the paving stones, and hear this rout,

how they would tremble!

«Yea, Children of Darkness,
rejoice in our triumph!

Brothers and Sisters, come
from a hundred dimensions,
from funereal places,
dens dank and deep,
Hell will escort you!
Come as a cohort
on griffin-powered
chariots! Come now!

The dead
in their vaults below, if they could feel
beneath the paving stones, and hear this rout,

how they would tremble!

« We welcome deformity and crime!
Come without remorse,
goat-footed dwarfs and suicides!

Come, Ghouls, whose lips
have never weaned from carrion,
and the black blood of the dead.

Infernal women,
outdo your rivals
in lust and vengeance,
outlast your lovers
to the point of death
and join us, exultant!

The dead
in their vaults below, if they could feel
beneath the paving stones, and hear this rout,

how they would tremble!

Thrice-hounded Jews,
you are welcome among us!

Gypsies, Bohemians,
charged with anathema —
all may join us! Welcome!

Will o’ the Wisps, we know you!
Pale specters who escaped by night
after an avenging patricide,

glide on the breeze, catch hold
of the frieze above the broken wall,
fly, or crawl!

The dead
in their vaults below, if they could feel
beneath the paving stones, and hear this rout,

how they would tremble!

Come, wicked goats,
eaters of everything.
Come, slender-bodied lice<

eaters of Everyman.
Come down. seducing Sylphs,
fall a stream of hail,
and melting, bedew the field.

Take hands again, with one
of your own kind or kindred!

Follow the beat. Expand
the dance. Repeat the chants!”

The dead
in their vaults below, if they could feel
beneath the paving stones, and hear this rout,

how they would tremble!

«Now at this beautiful moment
experts in magic shine
in the orgy, their blood-red beards
puffed out with smoke and lightning.
What did you bring? What offering?
What innocent soul is your prey?
or better yet, what unsaved sinner
did you kidnap from a confessional?
The victim with a victim in his mouth!
The fire of evil craves them all!

The dead
in their vaults below, if they could feel
beneath the paving stones, and hear this rout,

how they would tremble!

Laughing in the holy place
(for who would know?
who’s watching there?
be still, if you would live to tell!))
Satan now parodies a chant
after Saint Matthew,
and in the chapel where his king
calls upon him, a demon sings
from the book of God!

The dead
in their vaults below, if they could feel
beneath the paving stones, and hear this rout,

how they would tremble!

Bring them out of their resting place.
Open, ye tombs. Up, flagstones, up
lidded vaults! Bring out the monks
who once worshipped here. Arise!
And in each stall let a false monk spread
the fatal robe that burns his bones

and that a black chamberlain
attend to the burning of the cursed flame.

“Satan will see you now!

With your coarse hands
among the monk-dusk,
make ink and write,
Sorcerers, write your

Abracadabra!

Fly away first, ye wild furred birds
of magic and curses,
dictate a whole new alchemy
of forbidden metals. Tear
the very fabric of matter to shreds!
This is what Satan is all about!

Fly away first, ye wild furred birds,
whose bald wings hang
from the alcoves of Smarra*
where the vampire dwells.

Here is the signal!
Hell reclaims us.
The sun draws near! The time
may come when all souls know
no other flame than my black
lantern. May our dancing round
in the profound shadow
open the whole world
to an infernal circle!

*** ***

As I emerged from my hiding place
the pale dawn whitened the colossal
arches. Night and the Devil fled,
a confused swarm of dispersed demons.

And the dead, who had been burning bright
but moments before, reposed again.
The stones were back that held them;

their frozen glances gazing upward,
pillowed in ash and the dust of ages.

October 1825