It was All Hollow's Eve.  

From all around people were coming to the south eastern seaboard to pay homage to the full moon, and beseech the moon to bless them in the upcoming harvest season.

As was customary, the people brought their bongos to attract the attention of the moon. The drummers settled across the length of the beach in many little groups and began drumming their rituals. They drummed for many reasons.

To this ceremony came a young boy.
He was a quiet boy from a tribe of very meager means. He did not have with him a bongo, ornate and with a bold resounding rhythmic thump. All he had to bring to the ceremony was a single tiny bell and a sounding rod with which to strike it. The bell, when struck, would render a soft, high pitched ring.

The boy knew it was a drum circle and not a bell circle, but he wanted to be a part of the evenings events.

The sun was beginning to set and the drummers had begun.

The boy with the bell joined a group of drummers who drummed to ask the moon that the breeze would be cool and gentle, instead of savage and destructive. The boy was feeling the rhythm, and when he felt he was found the place, struck the bell with the sounding rod.

The drummers stopped drumming. One of the drummers, an older boy around the outside of the circle shooed the young boy with the bell away from the group.

The young boy felt sorry. He hoped he had not been to much of a disturbance to the circle. He walked down the beach a little way. The faintest sparkling of a few stars could begin to be noticed in the sky. The sun had nearly set.

Another circle of drummers drummed so that the moon would intercede with the vast ocean and ask that the tide be gentle instead of large and destructive to the crops in the field.

The small boy liked the rhythm made by the various hands rapping on the tight skins and the sides of the bongos. He could hear in his mind how his bell might fit in with this rhythm. He was patient. He waited. When he felt it was just the right place, the boy struck his bell with the sounding rod.

The drumming ceased. Many drummers scowled at the young boy with the bell from a far off village. One of the drummers waved for the boy to go away from this circle. He pouted a little and left.

The boy did not mean to cause a disturbance. He had only wanted to join the ceremony.

The sun had long since set. The moon and stars illuminated the sky like a silvery blanket. The boy felt the love that was on the beach deep in his chest. He began to smile.

The boy was drawn in by the rhythms of another circle of drummers who were drumming to ask the moon that the crops be plentiful with fruit, the goats to yield plenty of milk, and the chickens many eggs.

The boy thought he might try one last time to find a place for his soft, highly pitched bell tone. He was hopeful because a few of the drummers were rapping and shaking beaded pottery. Surely this circle would be open enough to allow the boy with the bell to join in and help beseech the moon.

He waited and listened. When he felt that he had found the right place in this rhythm, the young boy struck the bell with the sounding rod.

Once again, the drummers stopped. A man wearing a frown pointed sternly with an outstretched muscled arm and sent the boy further down the beach where there were no more circles of drummers.

His head hung low, and with nobody around to see, the young boy with the bell who had been sent away from all the drumming circles on the beach let heavy and hot tears roll down his face and drip from his round cheeks.

"Do not cry, Young One, " the boy heard a soft voice say.

The boy took a breath and the raised his head. Standing before him was a woman in silver robes fettered with strands of fiber shimmered like stardust. A soft mist surrounded her.

"The tone of your bell was most pleasing to me because it was possessed of a sincere gentleness and simplicity that was unique among a multitude of sounds that all bore a similarity to each other. By the time they reach the heavens, they are all the same.

Because your bell was different, it got my attention.

Because you rang your bell with the first circle of drummers, the wind will be gentle. Because you rang your bell with the second circle of drummers, the ocean will be calm. Because you rang your bell at the third circle of drummers, the crops and livestock will produce a plentitude."

The young boy could barely believe what the beautiful woman had said. She seemed to be cloudy through his lingering tears. The boy brought his palms to his face to wipe them from his eyes. When he looked back up to see her clearly, she was gone.

The round full moon was brightly shining in the midnight sky.

We're all secret drummers,
we all have drums in our chests,
we're all drummers at *heart.

Who’ll hear, a bitter tale for the tails
About the two drummers who are set,
To beat their palms upon the drum,
To free a sound their hands can’t catch,
And to struggle that the horn be split?

The sound’s a dirge filled with grieve
That all ears shall hear when it flies.
But many will take it for a true dance;
They will dance and spill their bloods,
And mix it with the naïve thirsty sand
Often hungry not tired of looking dry.
They’ll dance to dazzle the drummers
Who have fled the drum into cozy hides,
Who have made the dancers their ears,
Who deafened their ears from the voices
Of both the dancers and their own beat.
They will dance to dazzle the drummers,
And sweat and cry more tears of fuel
As drops upon a soft blazing inferno.

They will dance till the sound is dead,
When they’ve grown weak and numb,
At the sight of the arsons and the piles,
Of bodies and parts, waiting to be kept
In the belly of the gargantuan ground,
By the drummers who are now priest
Who’ll say: “weep not, for they’ve R.I.P.”

But they still won’t stop crying alone
At seeing black yesterday jump into today,
Holding pity pictures of dancers after action
To pinch their minds and cause real-weeps;
Asking them why they all had to dance
Even when they didn’t bang the drum.

Hi dudes and welcome to the candle festival which is at Nara park behind the Albert hall and there is a good band on the stage playing classic 80s music
From the act senior college band a bit of survivor and abba
And a whole lot more
There are a lot of stalls  where you could buy a lot of great souvenirs for the young and the young at heart and there are many demonstrations like judo and drumming and sumo wrestling  and at sunset a beautiful candle garden will light up the night and the crowd is beginning to build up, yeah
This is totally awesome and as I am walking around you see people getting ready to do their demonstrations
Welcome back and isn't narrabundah college energetic
As they performed their great Japanese dancing and over at the demonstration area they have calligraphy Japanese style
And there is a drumming workshop under the trees near the food tents and the judo dudes are showing off their styles isn't it wonderful and then we had a duet from Gungahlin college and mate they blew me away with their fine Japanese voices and at the moment the stage is at intermission waiting for the school choirs to begin l am looking forward to that
And as you look around you can see the judo dudes and dudettes displaying their judo skills by lifting their opponents
Over their shoulder, and over onto the mat and over at the ikebana tent they are showing us how to put it together with a fine hand which means she is trying to keep the beauty and now the judo has finished and the sumo wrestlers are showing their skills and I would hate to meet up with them in a dark alley and as you walk over to behind the ATM machines the kids are displaying their drumming skills, there are kids from babies to toddlers and aren't they having a ball
Yeah this can really brighten the imagination real hard and the school choirs are on the stage displaying their singing talents
Yeah, this candle festival has it all, I didn't see much of the school choirs and Nara university high school but o guarantee they would have been great and the sumo wrestlers really had the crowd glued to the stage and on the main stage there is a smoking ceremony and the karate is taking up the stage and soon they are having a sake barrel ceremony and this is going to be totally awesome dudes
It is now 6:26 and now we will feature some great music from ms satsuki odmara (koto) and Robert stockee (didgeridoo) & dr yukihiko doi (Japanese court music) and everyone is listening to this fine music as they await the big candle garden ceremony which I hope this year is awesome and the party is well and truly on the way I hope it is a very good ceremony
It will like the, whole evening
And kids are flying kites as well as making lantern, it costs a bit but it is jolly well worth it if you have kids pulling on your jumper begging for something to do and there is an array of very good stalls if you are looking for an early Christmas present for someone in your family, yeah that is sooooooo!awesome and on the main stage there is George & noriko with their wonderful blend of blues and Japanese sounds and they will get the party started right, they will get the party started quickly right
Aren't George and noriko great they are getting the crowd into the party mode and I love how they yell out koupei too before this song but, mate this is music and party combined and
Everyone is gathered round the stage tapping their feet as await the lighting of the beautiful candle garden
As we are nearing the end of the first set of George and noriko, the sun is going down
Behind the tree and soon as they let out their last koipei
The night is nearly upon us
And those candles will light up the beautiful garden here at Nara peace park
We just had a very beautiful
Ceremony with the chief minister and enstiguished guests and as they light up a few lanterns in the candle Garden we are entertained by koto and didgeridoo and Japanese court music and I can tell you, this is very cool and o think the didgeridoo sounds totally awesome with the other instruments and as we look around each tree has blue green and pink lights, and I tell you that looks great and a lot of families bought candles to wave around and the music was great
And now we are into the last 2 acts on stage and George and noriko are coming out to yell out a few cool kowpei and I think this will be really cool
You see he sits down on his chair and blasts some great blues and Japanese Music
Or Japanese blues and they are showing us how to party, dudes
Saki saki saki is the sound you are hearing  as they are playing a Japanese blues song which
When he says saki we say saki
He says saki saki saki we say saki saki saki and they get their beer and yell out kowpei
And everyone is recording the music and finding out whether
It worked and then as George and noriko are introducing the next song and now it is time for the last song which is rad dude
Shake your money maker
Shake your money maker
That is the last song but I am hoping they do an encore which
Will be pretty cool  and then he yells out koipei
Shake your money maker
Shake your money maker
And I think I will shake my pockets as that is my money maker oh well they didn't do and encore as they are setting up for the taikoz drumming
And as they brought out the first drum and there should be enough drumming to last from 8-30 to 9-00, I think the crowd
Are cheering taikoz on as they prepare
Those drummers were totally awesome and very fit
I know I couldn't drum like that in a million years, I liked how the drummers moved from sequence to sequence
They must put in a lot of days a week rehearsing for that
And when the drumming was over I talk a walk through the candle garden and my phone conked out so I couldn't get a picture but I might have some
Photos of the candle garden in a couple of days
So that is it that is all
So let's shake your money maker to buy some saki saki saki and yell out koipei
Catch ya later dudes and dudettes

At an unknown time of night at our cottage in northern Michigan…
My younger brother and I heard strange noises coming from the beach again…
We looked up at the ceiling and then the window…
As the voices from outside, in a lively allegro…
Grew softer and louder in repeating crescendos…
We skittered out the door and stared in fascination…
For what we saw must have been our imagination…

The door closed with a creak as our feet hit the grass…
It was at that moment we got a look at the mass…
Of stubby foot, hunchback creatures from which the sounds had amassed…

There was about six of them chanting like a choir…
They danced and paraded around our burnt out fire…
As we looked on, we saw our fire raise…
It got brighter as they lifted their hands in waves…
As light betook the blue beach night…
A crowd of colorfully masked gremlins caught us in their sights!

Their feet slowed to a stop and they quieted down…
They stood still as the fire flickered off their weird wooden frowns…
One reached out his hand in a come-here motion…
They seemed to stand and wait with an encouraging notion…
As the fire crackled and the waves tumbled onto the beach…

All I can remember, is for the rest of that summer…
My younger brother and I served as the drummers…
For that quirky marching band of lake sprites…
With which our burnt out fire we’d reignite…
At an unknown time of night at our cottage in northern Michigan…

for any of my work to have any meaning, i can only suggested browsing Empedocles (of Acragas), in saying that, i suggest the name, primarily it's a form of philosophy, written in poetic form... in that it exhausts the need for poetic technique: i.e., there's more to see, than actually hear.

- just like i don't understand people who fake doing the maestro whenever they listen to classical music, in the same vein: your greengroccer... your plumber... your electricians.... god forbid you t.v. guy....  don't translate that oddity in, modern music and imitating drummers... i get air guitar, i get air maestro... no one really bother the drumming brigade, when i listen to classical music, i am looking for a maestro, when i listen to contemporary music i, want a drummer, bad; ****! St. Thomas' gospel is becoming real... like i really, really, need a *** change.... never mind the 50cl of whiskey waiting for me, or sasha foxxx's eyes... the job? hammer in a thousand nails... industrialise ***, what do you get? a **** economy... why would god enter the equation if all the problems are theological self-made-heresy? it's not even that *** sells, and god gives gives rise to stampedes... what with the Koran and oil, are we counting to state the same arithmetic... i mean: the industrialisation of ***... nothing that hurts, nothing but a quip... that sorta of definition belongs in China or India with a billion participants... what we have is a case of mouthing off the competitors, when you're actually chihuahua in the Sahara of expectation.... i'm as mad as the numbers say i am... personal stories are non-essential.... i included mine for added effect... or a presumtpion that i might: acknowledged as having said anything in total....counter to english existentialism, so wholly preoccpupied with zoos and biology as the only scientific resource... i can't agree to it making sense, in the standard item-basis-list of following-up an argument... that dire, fake or indeed couch-sloth desert-prune is only half of *σ... i mean there's a tendency of a natural disparity, to ensure a dialectical health of any if all argument... σ = per se... it's because there no single, identifiable argument, the one current is a vogue argument, in the realm of zeitgeist parameters... it's not the only one... the world will move on... it's only that at the zenith of civilisation, we are only bound to industrialise ***, and art is, as according to W. Benjamin, in a state of: ditto, in the age of machanical, reproduction... easier said than... and so done... i feel the anaesthetic needle doing the suggested thing, of numbing me... it's not when art is given onto this Moloch-like altar... it's when *** is industrially-scaled to require cinema... and the quickie-dip of dimension having repertoire in threes... i have no care to ensure there's a narrative and a frenzy... i just care to say: there's a narrative, and a frenzy.... that one has no insurance, and that the other has all the resources that would otherwise invole a familial life... which now, evidently, is prone to same-*** affiliations than compliment-*** affiliations... meaning less art from the **** realm, and more art from the hetero or h-quasi realm (origin ****)... you need to talk about the cushions, if you're going to sleep in the bed, ****'s sake! -

to really live by the "rules" of existentialism,
to live an existential doctrine,
is to really: live an uneventful life,
or should i say: rather ordinary?
  well... i wouldn't go as far as saying it
might be boring, just... un-spectacular.

and all it takes it five beers and, oh, about
6 miles of wet wintry cement,
   and o.t.t.'s album blumenkraft,
with the crescendo song: billy the kid strikes back...

walk 6 or 7 miles in winter
and you come back into a warm abode
and you have skeleton hands...
numb from the cold...
but in england winter is different
than on the continent...
a wet winter (which is very english)
is worse than a dry winter (which is
continental)...
  as honesty goes... -18C in a dry winter
is probably not as bad as -1C in a wet
winter...
    so there's me, completely
****-faced watching the t.v. series
this is us, and one of the characters is
a black kid that gets adopted by
a white family when
    one of the triplets of the white family
dies in child-birth,
and he finds his biological father...
and also a mid-life crisis:
white folks told me to excell,
so he does,
   black daddy was a poet and played
the piano...
and he experiences a mild
schizophrenia... see, it's not a scary word,
i mean: without the extreme symptoms...
   a split-mind...
thankfully i cushioned mine on bilingualism...
and i have been ever since: bilingual -
nothing to be proud of,
   after all: there's the genius polymath...
but it's not about that: it's about winter...
winters in england are so different to
winters on the continent...
the grey skies? oh, that's here all year...
    talk about being a weather man
in Saudi Arabia, most of them moved to England:
where the action is...
          
but really, i can't imagine why existentialism
as a movement, culminated in the zenith
it achieved (precursor movement?
phenomenology)
        oh yah yah: were nieche, very Kensington,
very, Chiswick...

but to really appreciate an existentialist
dogma, a truly uneventful life...
   and given that existentialism in the French
vein akin to Kant but not so much Heidegger
lends itself to the cartesian maxim...
well... that's because it kinda has to,
but not really...

  Kant took out i think and merely focused on that,
his biography goes along the lines of:
a ritual walker, stayed in one place,
    a rook of the clock, i couldn't exactly call him
a pawn... nonetheless...
             a very uneventful life...
why? thought.
    
    what's the most interesting thing i've done today?
i thought, or, i had a thought (a / the article scissors
cutting off the -ism)...
and that's about it...
    had a thought...
                   i hit the gong that thus translates into
the post ergo / therefore of i am,
   and then i realised: i wasn't motivated enough
by my thought: to do much!
              
historically speaking, my writing can only be placed
into a dynamic of being called post-existentialism,
it's not boasting, it's just a plain fact,
   like Monday will be St. Valentine's day, 2017...
and some men collect stamps,
   and some men like fishing,
    and some men have the habit of writing about
things that are, a bit like Avogardo's constant,
meaning they'd love to speak about these things
over, and over again, and never get bored of them,
or for that matter: start families.

strange how it works, have it all...
       or have none of it, to later only have that one
vector that's opposite of mortal, ******...
        or have both, in a way,
and be later traced to some Shakespearean controversy
about a mistaken identity...
well... there's that too.

that must be it, existentialism, and the most,
ordinary life...
         pause for what, akin to something else i wrote
about beginning the thought catching
up to the walk a few days earlier which began
with z and i and diacritical marks,
how northern slavs wouldn't necessarily disrespect
the already present diacritical mark
on the ι (iota), i.e. regarding acute z (ź),
and how if z & i appear together, i.e.
    z and immediately after it, i... you don't bother
writing an acute version of z,
   as a southern slav (balkan) might,
with his caron (ž)...

or a bit like stating the old chestnut of universals
vs. particulars...
   well... they can say what they like about
the cheapness of writing in this medium
but there is nothing so gut-wrenching as a deleted
passage, that will never return...
    immediate heartache... there on the screen,
the computer decides to "have a mind of its own"
moment by either your carelessness
          or the computer's defects and: ****!
gone, a shift+ and suddenly... writing while not
looking at the keyboard, as you do... ****!
gone... gone baby... gone...
    and if that's not analogy of: a lesson
in placing your hands correctly onto the computer
does me: you're looking at the keyboard
and not at the screen...

  how about writing with my eyes closed?
  haven't seen anyone attempt that...

here goes:

    and with that i give you hades...

not bad, i should try it more often... it's not believable
because it's actually correct and has no mistakes....
*******.

alternative? and with that i give you sheol...
   still the same... double *******.

((   ((
    
and that's all it takes... the part where you let go,
because you have to:
  the regret can be there, but soon has to
be overruled...
   it mattered at the zenith of logic,
it was really there, for such a brief moment,
i could call it a study in how you can ****
a very lucid moment, and then have to "resort",
but, rather: merely accepting it as having no place
in the overall composition...
    so to the windowsill, finishing off
blackbeard (whiskey and coca cola and
a cigarette)... changing the aura from
o.t.t.'s album taken home from the "marathon"
(yes, the prime existential tool is the transcendence
of synonyms, encouraging misnomers
or: how to not build dams, or become custard
beavers, looking for words...
    the river, every time, always looking at a river...
the sea and the people and time...
   rivers occupy an infinite concept of space
and the change within such a Thermopylae,
as it might give you indigestion,
or the highest serving rank of memory...
the sea and the people don't scare me,
and it's hardly a thing of admiration...
its just a sight of pulverisation, a headache...
the river, the solitude, and the fact that local
newspapers have adverts of only lonely women...
sure, read a national newspaper and there
are women seeking men, women seeking women,
men seeking women, men seeking men...
but look at a local, a local newspaper: only women
advertising themselves for candles and firecrackers...
it seams men were always programmed (a priori)
        into the gravitas of solitude...
what i really meant to say: existentialistic writings
can appear foreboding with the ditto...
with the perception that there's this ulterior,
dark-seeded motive...
      i just thought about bypassing the thesaurus,
like some writers do,
    you can spot it when they do,
a word they looked up from their labour
of lumberjacking the keyboard
sticks out like a modern statue, or a broken finger,
a word: right off the pages of a thesaurus...
   i just mean that there's nothing sinister enclosed in
the said "brackets"...  there's nothing additional about it,
but as narratives go... you sometimes want to bypass
Sherlock Holmes and write a synonym-antonym,
you want to bypass the thesaurus, content with your
own vocab riches, but too "lazy" / engrossed in
what's actually coming...
say, that interlude, a cigarette, finishing off the whiskey,
with the glass freezing and having a layer of ice
around it... and: why i'll never be part of the nirvana's
or the doors' cult...
     pearl jam's indifference, from their second album.

so it's sometimes thereuputic letting go,
  after all, no one built a house on the summit of Everest,
if i wrote something of such clarifying quality,
and lost it... i can only apply an imagery of having seen it,
the best i can suggest that i wrote something
akin to 1 + 1 = 2, and then accidently deleted it...
and that's the sad part,
universals as vowels, particulars like consonants,
    even numbers akin to 2 and odd numbers akin to 1
(divided into decimals, or the wormhole of 0.123456 etc.) -
it was a beautiful sight, and then, again: ****!
gone... like a magician doing a trick
   and then... the sadness of having lost the technique
to recreate it...
well, the best i can do to recreate it is based
on a short argument...
   if universals and particulars (relying on the fact
that both have a plural form,
  i.e. so not 1 in 1, but the many of 1,
   and akin to: the 1 in many, and the many in many,
and the 1 in 1 / focus, something identifiable) -
or loosely universals like vowels, and particulars like consonants,
but given the two experience diacritical distinction /
additions... i could best remember what i wrote
as: 1 e.g. particular, if divided: fractions, and after
fractions: decimals...
                2 e.g. universal, if divided: whole numbers,
and after whole numbers fractions, and later decimals...
   so on and so forth with 3 (particular), 4 (universal),
     5 (p.), 6 (u.)...
                 a bit like having your own telescope
and microscope, just looking at what we make silence
of, our two ways of encoding what could have,
or should have been said, that was nonetheless said,
transcending our contemporaries as, what can only
be described as... an echo, lost in the caves of aeons...

this promenade begun with something to z & i...
or z, i, ι, ź and ž (what a nice pentagram,
i was watching the six nation's match
between wales and england,
and lo! behold... a goat at the fore!
  mind you, i took a cigarette break when they scored
their two tries).
Cardiff? yeah, been there once...
         Poland v Wales qualifying match,
donning a polish football shirt, got approached
by two young welsh girls saying: your team is ****...
started giving it the local... how fast they ran away...
and they say we laugh more than we cry,
   and i could be the one to snigger a sly laugh at
that memory, but cinema memory says to me:
time to usher in the reverse-psychology,
calling white black, and laughter crying...
        or as i like to call it, the paradox marriage
that has, literally not tentacle hold on the world,
   the bilingual marriage,
             lodged deep inside my head,
most recognisable by my theory study of diacritical
marks, or actually having noticed them,
and having no real, authentic accent to remind me
that i belong in either geography...
         whether from beginning, or toward an end...
some call it acting, some call it faking,
  i call it: just what i was given, or, more precisely:
what i earned... and that was to no good use...
        unless... this is the best expression of what the foundations
look like.

what was i thinking of? ah!

   it just involved the σ                       ς roundabout...
the aesthetic variation for one,
but on another investigation, well, sigma, total, sum,
and how be obey it like a golden ratio or pi,
   it's just auto-suggestive of how we are never truly
synchronised in our arguments...
   but, "paradoxically", or should i say: by a miracle,
make up the greatest potent to have an argument...
  we can never truly really synchronises ourselves
to fill the boots of expressing an utopian dream,
otherwise we wouldn't dream... period...
  so bye bye Freud and that method of escapism...
     we already ensured that, if they be our creation,
the gods are already at war with the Titans...
      i'll actually acknowledge that in an age of
pop philosophy in that Greece was, a place of allowing
a fertility of thought and later popularising it
(we don't live in times where there's a fertility consecrated
on the altar of thought, or what philosophy is, thinking per se /
for itself... innovators! scientists! up-starts!
or as some might say, the other pronoun battle,
the one without genitals involved,
as could only be sooner said:
  per se, or per per...
                       in in...
nothing sexualised... it's only that there's a limit in pronouns,
per se / in itself must come across the muddle
regarding the moment when people lose their
identity and begin their life with: ? thought
rather than i think,
       i can't place it anywhere else than inside my head,
better there than in the genitals,
   or wasn't Jesus circumcised and the zeitgeist
of St. Thomas' gospel and the transgender movment?
    the church is old, and counter-authoritarian,
it's just a tired institution, so it has no actual authenticity
over the current changes in society,
    might as well call onto Islam to move the chess pieces...
or that's what i'm currently seeing...
   i was just thinking about a logical limit in language,
e.g. timbaland's song the way i are...
   there really is a logical limit on how far you can
suddenly just forget grammar...
            so why begin with per se?
                 at best described as a cogitans (

The air is charged with eminence.
Red-bellied birds lose their song in the wind.
Just when will the sky crack open?
When will the screaming turn to tears?
Send the drummers running
and, before their sticks hit the ground,
give face to wide-eyed fears.

I can smell you from my window:
Amalgamation of mushrooms and clover.
Just when will you crack me open?
When will my primal state lie bare?
Strip me of city sophistication
and, before the drummers come running,
wash me well beyond my years.

I am enraptured,
completely and utterly

caught

in this moment
in you

the beat shakes the air
my heart is stolen
and follows it

time slows achingly
slow enough to catch,
every moment

but not enough to savour,
not enough to appreciate nor inscribe,
fully into my being

yet even still
my heart soars
as now it knows

that it still can.

The symbolism of this Christmas classic
has a second, hidden meaning for the ages.
For this song has an ulterior motive,
contained in verses that seem outrageous.

Christ is the truest fulfillment of Love,
in the primary doctrine of Christianity;
therefore, He is the focus of each refrain,
being the sin offering on Crucifixion’s tree.

The pair of turtle doves represents books,
volumes of both the Old and New Testaments.
The Bible embodies the Spirit of God calling…
for the World to turn to Christ and repent.

The three french hens stand for the trinity
of metaphysical concepts: Faith, Hope and Love.
Despite questionable claims, Love requires action-
and that some of us need a gentle, spiritual shove.

Four calling birds correspond to the Good News,
found in accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke & John.
Together they present a harmonious view of Christ
and the divine message of the Gospel’s Song.

The five golden rings echo the Jewish Torah,
one of the first accounts of God’s spiritual laws.
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy
remind of Redemption’s need to offset human flaws.

Six geese a-laying demonstrate the creativity of God,
regarding His work in the archetype days of creation.
For we are to lift up our eyes and see Him, through
inspiration that fuels our desires and imaginations.

The swans a-swimming represent the seven-fold gifts
from the Holy Spirit: Prophesy, Serving, Exhortation,
Teaching, Contribution, Leadership, and God’s Mercy…
holy promises that complement the substance of Salvation.

The eight maids a-milking reflect the Beatitudes,
a message given by Christ at the Sermon on the Mount.
He taught Heavenly concepts, in which we are blessed,
via inspired platitudes for us- to joyfully recount.

Nine ladies dancing recall the Fruits of the Spirit:
Love, Joy, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Self-Control,
Faithfulness, Peace, and Gentleness - sacred constructs
for soothing the pains, experienced by our weary souls.

The lords a-leaping personify Jehovah’s Ten Commandments:
instructions for worshiping only Him, keeping the Sabbath,
and various prohibitions against idolatry, blasphemy, ******,
theft, dishonesty, and adultery, which lead us off His path.

The eleven pipers piping constitute the faithful Disciples,
who walked the Earth with Christ, observing Him firsthand.
They were the original, Christian acolytes who were taught-
how to live victoriously under the pressure of Life’s demands.

The drummers drumming symbolize the twelve points of belief,
outlined in the religious doctrine, called the Apostles' Creed.
Now with greater insight, lift your voice and sing this song,
using your faith in God, that you willingly and lovingly concede.
.
.
.

Author Notes:

This my poetic interpretation of the familiar Christmas song. From 1558ad until 1829ad, Roman Catholics in England were not permitted to openly practice their faith. An unknown author, during that era, wrote this carol as a Catechism song for young Catholics. It has two levels of meaning: the surface meaning plus a hidden meaning, originally known only by members of their church. Each element in the carol has a code word, implying a religious tenet, which children could easily remember.

Learn more about me and my poetry at:
http://www.amazon.com/Reaching-Towards-His-Unbounded-Glory/dp/1419650513/ref=sr11?ie=UTF8&qid;=1387452157&sr;=8-1&keywords;=reaching+towards+his+unbounded+glory

By Joseph J. Breunig 3rd, © 2013, All rights reserved.

Drummers drumming to the beat
  of preserving and celebrating
    culture
Feel the music
Feel the beat
Start to move
Sway to the rhythm of the
  subway train
In the midst of the people
  Lose
    Yourself
One, two, three
One, two, three
  Drummers drumming
One, two, three
One, two, three
  Subway swaying
One, two, three
One, two, three
  Bodies moving,
    Dancing
      In
        The
          Subway

(PIANO DI SORRENTO.)

Fortu, Frotu, my beloved one,
Sit here by my side,
On my knees put up both little feet!
I was sure, if I tried,
I could make you laugh spite of Scirocco;
Now, open your eyes—
Let me keep you amused till he vanish
In black from the skies,
With telling my memories over
As you tell your beads;
All the memories plucked at Sorrento
—The flowers, or the weeds,
Time for rain! for your long hot dry Autumn
Had net-worked with brown
The white skin of each grape on the bunches,
Marked like a quail’s crown,
Those creatures you make such account of,
Whose heads,—specked with white
Over brown like a great spider’s back,
As I told you last night,—
Your mother bites off for her supper;
Red-ripe as could be.
Pomegranates were chapping and splitting
In halves on the tree:
And betwixt the loose walls of great flintstone,
Or in the thick dust
On the path, or straight out of the rock side,
Wherever could ******
Some burnt sprig of bold hardy rock-flower
Its yellow face up,
For the prize were great butterflies fighting,
Some five for one cup.
So, I guessed, ere I got up this morning,
What change was in store,
By the quick rustle-down of the quail-nets
Which woke me before
I could open my shutter, made fast
With a bough and a stone,
And look through the twisted dead vine-twigs,
Sole lattice that’s known!
Quick and sharp rang the rings down the net-poles,
While, busy beneath,
Your priest and his brother tugged at them,
The rain in their teeth:
And out upon all the flat house-roofs
Where split figs lay drying,
The girls took the frails under cover:
Nor use seemed in trying
To get out the boats and go fishing,
For, under the cliff,
Fierce the black water frothed o’er the blind-rock
No seeing our skiff
Arrive about noon from Amalfi,
—Our fisher arrive,
And pitch down his basket before us,
All trembling alive
With pink and grey jellies, your sea-fruit,
—You touch the strange lumps,
And mouths gape there, eyes open, all manner
Of horns and of humps.
Which only the fisher looks grave at,
While round him like imps
Cling screaming the children as naked
And brown as his shrimps;
Himself too as bare to the middle—
—You see round his neck
The string and its brass coin suspended,
That saves him from wreck.
But today not a boat reached Salerno,
So back to a man
Came our friends, with whose help in the vineyards
Grape-harvest began:
In the vat, half-way up in our house-side,
Like blood the juice spins,
While your brother all bare-legged is dancing
Till breathless he grins
Dead-beaten, in effort on effort
To keep the grapes under,
Since still when he seems all but master,
In pours the fresh plunder
From girls who keep coming and going
With basket on shoulder,
And eyes shut against the rain’s driving,
Your girls that are older,—
For under the hedges of aloe,
And where, on its bed
Of the orchard’s black mould, the love-apple
Lies pulpy and red,
All the young ones are kneeling and filling
Their laps with the snails
Tempted out by this first rainy weather,—
Your best of regales,
As tonight will be proved to my sorrow,
When, supping in state,
We shall feast our grape-gleaners (two dozen,
Three over one plate)
With lasagne so tempting to swallow
In slippery ropes,
And gourds fried in great purple slices,
That colour of popes.
Meantime, see the grape-bunch they’ve brought you,—
The rain-water slips
O’er the heavy blue bloom on each globe
Which the wasp to your lips
Still follows with fretful persistence—
Nay, taste, while awake,
This half of a curd-white smooth cheese-ball,
That peels, flake by flake,
Like an onion’s, each smoother and whiter;
Next, sip this weak wine
From the thin green glass flask, with its stopper,
A leaf of the vine,—
And end with the prickly-pear’s red flesh
That leaves through its juice
The stony black seeds on your pearl-teeth
…Scirocco is loose!
Hark! the quick, whistling pelt of the olives
Which, thick in one’s track,
Tempt the stranger to pick up and bite them,
Though not yet half black!
How the old twisted olive trunks shudder!
The medlars let fall
Their hard fruit, and the brittle great fig-trees
Snap off, figs and all,—
For here comes the whole of the tempest
No refuge, but creep
Back again to my side and my shoulder,
And listen or sleep.

O how will your country show next week
When all the vine-boughs
Have been stripped of their foliage to pasture
The mules and the cows?
Last eve, I rode over the mountains;
Your brother, my guide,
Soon left me, to feast on the myrtles
That offered, each side,
Their fruit-*****, black, glossy and luscious,—
Or strip from the sorbs
A treasure, so rosy and wondrous,
Of hairy gold orbs!
But my mule picked his sure, sober path out,
Just stopping to neigh
When he recognized down in the valley
His mates on their way
With the *******, and barrels of water;
And soon we emerged
From the plain, where the woods could scarce follow
And still as we urged
Our way, the woods wondered, and left us,
As up still we trudged
Though the wild path grew wilder each instant,
And place was e’en grudged
’Mid the rock-chasms, and piles of loose stones
(Like the loose broken teeth
Of some monster, which climbed there to die
From the ocean beneath)
Place was grudged to the silver-grey fume-****
That clung to the path,
And dark rosemary, ever a-dying,
That, ’spite the wind’s wrath,
So loves the salt rock’s face to seaward,—
And lentisks as staunch
To the stone where they root and bear berries,—
And… what shows a branch
Coral-coloured, transparent, with circlets
Of pale seagreen leaves—
Over all trod my mule with the caution
Of gleaners o’er sheaves,
Still, foot after foot like a lady—
So, round after round,
He climbed to the top of Calvano,
And God’s own profound
Was above me, and round me the mountains,
And under, the sea,
And within me, my heart to bear witness
What was and shall be!
Oh Heaven, and the terrible crystal!
No rampart excludes
Your eye from the life to be lived
In the blue solitudes!
Oh, those mountains, their infinite movement!
Still moving with you—
For, ever some new head and breast of them
Thrusts into view
To observe the intruder—you see it
If quickly you turn
And, before they escape you, surprise them—
They grudge you should learn
How the soft plains they look on, lean over,
And love (they pretend)
-Cower beneath them; the flat sea-pine crouches
The wild fruit-trees bend,
E’en the myrtle-leaves curl, shrink and shut—
All is silent and grave—
’Tis a sensual and timorous beauty—
How fair, but a slave!
So, I turned to the sea,—and there slumbered
As greenly as ever
Those isles of the siren, your Galli;
No ages can sever
The Three, nor enable their sister
To join them,—half-way
On the voyage, she looked at Ulysses—
No farther today;
Though the small one, just launched in the wave,
Watches breast-high and steady
From under the rock, her bold sister
Swum half-way already.
Fortu, shall we sail there together
And see from the sides
Quite new rocks show their faces—new haunts
Where the siren abides?
Shall we sail round and round them, close over
The rocks, though unseen,
That ruffle the grey glassy water
To glorious green?
Then scramble from splinter to splinter,
Reach land and explore,
On the largest, the strange square black turret
With never a door,
Just a loop to admit the quick lizards;
Then, stand there and hear
The birds’ quiet singing, that tells us
What life is, so clear!
The secret they sang to Ulysses,
When, ages ago,
He heard and he knew this life’s secret,
I hear and I know!

Ah, see! The sun breaks o’er Calvano—
He strikes the great gloom
And flutters it o’er the mount’s summit
In airy gold fume!
All is over! Look out, see the gipsy,
Our tinker and smith,
Has arrived, set up bellows and forge,
And down-squatted forthwith
To his hammering, under the wall there;
One eye keeps aloof
The urchins that itch to be putting
His jews’-harps to proof,
While the other, through locks of curled wire,
Is watching how sleek
Shines the hog, come to share in the windfalls
—An abbot’s own cheek!
All is over! Wake up and come out now,
And down let us go,
And see the fine things got in order
At Church for the show
Of the Sacrament, set forth this evening;
Tomorrow’s the Feast
Of the Rosary’s ******, by no means
Of Virgins the least—
As you’ll hear in the off-hand discourse
Which (all nature, no art)
The Dominican brother, these three weeks,
Was getting by heart.
Not a post nor a pillar but’s dizened
With red and blue papers;
All the roof waves with ribbons, each altar
A-blaze with long tapers;
But the great masterpiece is the scaffold
Rigged glorious to hold
All the fiddlers and fifers and drummers
And trumpeters bold,
Not afraid of Bellini nor Auber,
Who, when the priest’s hoarse,
Will strike us up something that’s brisk
For the feast’s second course.
And then will the flaxen-wigged Image
Be carried in pomp
Through the plain, while in gallant procession
The priests mean to stomp.
And all round the glad church lie old bottles
With gunpowder stopped,
Which will be, when the Image re-enters,
Religiously popped.
And at night from the crest of Calvano
Great bonfires will hang,
On the plain will the trumpets join chorus,
And more poppers bang!
At all events, come—to the garden,
As far as the wall,
See me tap with a *** on the plaster
Till out there shall fall
A scorpion with wide angry nippers!

…”Such trifles”—you say?
Fortu, in my England at home,
Men meet gravely today
And debate, if abolishing Corn-laws
Is righteous and wise
—If ’tis proper, Scirocco should vanish
In black from the skies!