"steppe" poems
Samhain's Eve With Friends
The Lady's light is ripe and full and orange
so heavy the sky can scarce bear her up
as I tread slowly tap tap my staff clicks
my feet in their hurry crush sweet maple and acrid fir underfoot
and the early evening mist grasps at bare tree limbs like heart broken suiters
It's an early celabration Samhain Eve
No Matter
tis me alone and of course The Lady
Slowly I find my stone grove and rest a bit ... price of a Crone
No musicians tonight
Ah the tape will do well enough
No Sisters tonight
too far to come obligations trick or treat ...
No Matter
Circle swept and Caste,Quarters called
next all in turn music soft but building
insence sweet shrouds me
Fire my element crackles and spits with blessed heat
Time to steppe the Circle
This Dance I know so well
This Dance I have taught and danced and dreamt it always
Eyes Closed Cleansing Breathe
Bells on wrist and ankles chime
Now swaying stepping Luna's great course across the sky
once this way next reverse
slowly gently all recedes
there is nothing now but
me and She
She Morghanna Isis Gaia Mother Maiden Crone
My Lady
The flute is faint and hard to hear now
but the drum is strong heartbeat strong slow and deep
suddenly there are voices far yet whysper close
so soft full of laughter and secrets
..ghostly hands Sisters past, lost to me and spirits new entwine with mine and voices long forgotten soar
So Sweet
and my feet so clumsy and slow seem to fly and I hear the flute in the chime of Her laughter
She Has Come
Welcome My Lady
I hear nothing now but the drum and the rush of the wind through my hair
The Drum The Sisters The Fire
and My Lady
Suddenly my step slows no longer is it sure
aware of the stones beaneath and my hand blest but a moment ago now feels the loss of my Sisters grasp
but we are never far from one another
no matter the side of the veil
I tire and stop
the night has waned
the tape has stopped..when I cant recall
Never Mind
Close the quarters with thanks
Sever the Circle
Douse the smudge
and
Thank The Lady for a
Samhain's Eve , with friends
Solita Arcanes ShadoeWalker 31/10/10
Jan 23, 2011
Jan 23, 2011 at 2:50 PM UTC
It’s the Eye of the Sun,
-staring down at me…
At night the mind of the Moon,
-so bright it’s all you see…
Seven Glorious Ones, Horus-Follower’s sons,
-and the cycle’s complete; time for a repeat!
Magic year, magic mind, Ozymandias seat,
a magic moment in time, 'ten found-on-the-line,' -mark a place where you'll be.
At the steps are the ones, ancient Kings of the Sun.
Torn apart by the people, when the harvest was done,
And solar barque crosses Styx, to the gates of Ammon…
Riders come from the steppe to see the death of the one,
Ancient King of the Sun redeem the land and the seed…
-Rises up as Orion, again, and now he’s freed!
It’s the Eye of the Sun and the Lion is free, roaming over the lands, now the cycle’s complete…
Jun 16, 2016
Jun 16, 2016 at 1:59 PM UTC
IN THIS SPACE AND AT THIS HOUR
by Doyenne Solace Arcanna ShadoeWalker
In This Place And At This Hour
In this place and at this hour Sisters gather to Call the Power
Winds will rise and lightning crack
We pace the Circle fore and then step aft
Luna's path we steppe then Sol's retrack
Circle once and then return
My Lady we have much to learn
Winds will blow and Earth will flower
Fire will burn and Water shower
This rite complete come rising Sun
Lady here thy will shall be done
In this place and at this hour
Lady keeps this Sacred bower
These are my Words This is my Way
Blessed Be
Doyenne Solita Arcanna ShadoeWalker 2012
•❤• Wiccan Blessings Bright and True from this Old Witch straight on To YOU!!~•❤•~
Mar 6, 2014
Mar 6, 2014 at 12:56 PM UTC
Temple Hymn 17: an Excerpt
to the Badtibira Temple of Dumuzi
by Enheduanna (circa 2285-2250 BCE)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
O, house of jeweled lapis illuminating the radiant bed
in the peace-inducing palace of our Lady of the Steppe!
Enheduanna, the daughter of King Sargon the Great of Akkad, is the first ancient writer whose name remains known today. She appears to be the first named poet in human history and the first known author of prayers and hymns. Enheduanna, who lived circa 2285-2250 BCE, is one of the first women we know by name. She was high priestess of the goddess Inanna (Ishtar/Astarte/Aphrodite) and the moon god Nanna (Sin) in the Sumerian city-state of Ur. Keywords/Tags: Enheduanna, translation, Badtibira, Dumuzi, Akkad, Sumer, Ur, Sumerian temple hymns
Apr 3, 2020
Apr 3, 2020 at 5:57 AM UTC
Not in this chamber only at my birth—
When the long hours of that mysterious night
Were over, and the morning was in sight—
I cried, but in strange places, steppe and firth
I have not seen, through alien grief and mirth;
And never shall one room contain me quite
Who in so many rooms first saw the light,
Child of all mothers, native of the earth.
So is no warmth for me at any fire
To-day, when the world’s fire has burned so low;
I kneel, spending my breath in vain desire,
At that cold hearth which one time roared so strong,
And straighten back in weariness, and long
To gather up my little gods and go.
1.2k
The night is a creeper bent laden with brooding meditations and the mists of time:
Tonight, the moon is a distant jasmine bud; nascent fragrance waiting to pour into the world.
I've seen your work, magicienne, how you roll the stars out from your hat.
A wand wave, and the celestial chorus of chants and hymns pours out from the skies.
I've walked with you, on the old beaten steppe, pole star,
I've seen ships dock at ancient inlets of water
engorging in parched lands - they were reed boats before;
they were catamarans later, rafts and sailboats;
This is how we rose from the mollusc, seeking you in the stars;
When thunder strikes the lonely peak and rains wash our plains,
I've seen your footsteps, half-erased by the swelling riverbanks.
I was in your womb, and never afraid of the primordial waters. Yours, an umbilical love.
The clouds part for your evening sojourn through the western sky,
where the larks go forth spreading cheer.
I am the wood, the last refuge of all mysteries.
I am the clearing where a solitary home hangs in time.
I house all the antiquities.
I am the subtle space that hosts bubble worlds.
I am Hyperions.
Feb 5, 2015
Feb 5, 2015 at 7:26 PM UTC
We've shared secrets no one else would ever want to know,
but now your brothel hair has become a nest for dead birds.
Where once you were a wet marsh,
perfumed in tangy musk,
you have now become a dry
steppe covered in rotting fish.
I'm writing acrostics of your name,
remembering you like discarded tire husks
on Arizona's August freeways.
Jun 28, 2013
Jun 28, 2013 at 7:43 AM UTC
Shall I Dance for you?
Darkness has fallen and the heat of the day ebbs
Shall I sing for you?
The sun sleeps and the moon rises in the sky
shall I steppe the Circle for you.
The days toil is over and the fire is lit
the Circle caste and the drums deep thrum sounds
Shall I dance for you?
Sweet incense heavy in the cool night air
bells and voices raised in Joyful greetings
Mother let me Dance for you
Slowly stepping right then left
solemn and slow with dignity
Faster now with light steps and free hearts
At last we are flying
hands clasped and robes a flutter
our voices ringing
Mother we dance the dance in your Name
We Send your praises soaring into the star studded sky
This is our way from time unknown
Mother Daughter Teacher Guide
We celebrate the night and the Circle
and You.
Solie - 2006
Apr 26, 2010
Apr 26, 2010 at 5:30 PM UTC
Translated by Przemyslaw Musialowski 10/30/2019
There, in my country, in a faraway land
a hundred dimmed stars shine in a crown,
one hundred extinguished stars above the field stand,
like a hundred knights in an iron armor clad.
There, in my country, in a faraway land
one hundred red-hot hearts with longing burn,
one hundred red-hot hearts pound in the chest
like a ghost into armor iron plates.
There, in my country, in a faraway land
one hundred winds are galloping through fallow lands,
one hundred winds are galloping through the steppe trail
like one hundred steeds' golden horseshoes beating the ground.
And when one hundred days, one hundred nights shall pass,
with hearts full of power knights will rise,
knights will rise, horses will mount,
and they'll light up stars in the golden crown.
Maria Konopnicka (1842-1910)
Oct 30, 2019
Oct 30, 2019 at 2:10 PM UTC
She sold flowers atop my cigarette’s sting,
And soiled steppe -
A path splattered someone,
Clocks kept prior and piano strings.
She’d be my last resort,
Parallels bottled – Two-tight braids,
Scarred upper lip and eyes deep,
Diggin’, diggin’ deep into me.
She’d **** if she could,
But money met is money spent,
And knifes in backs are bad for business,
So she’d always be mine.
That said, I’d always be hers,
Scampered, sleepy, and with one drunken
Right eye to wander east come
Sin under satin.
But the hour’d arrive, “One” becomes,
And the breeze would do what it does –
I’d see the sea, the sky, and lastly to hear,
She’d set up shop elsewhere;
She’d be happy, he’d be happy,
And I’d be somewhere sullen,
Somewhere awful, somewhere scribbled,
An echo and if only, a stain upon her altar.
Jun 2, 2016
Jun 2, 2016 at 12:14 AM UTC
Across the Savannah we sailed
Floating through the slipstream
Of desire.
Higher we rose, to thorny heights.
Embraced by wings
Of fire.
A kingdom freely given turns to rust
Citadel walls fall in blizzards of dust.
The air is displaced by talons
That grip from ankle to throat.
Clawing and scratching,
A noose,
A rope.
Upon the steppe I lay,
Impaled upon your
Tree of pain.
Barbed through the heart,
Saved for a rainy day.
May 1, 2014
May 1, 2014 at 7:11 AM UTC
In the shadow of the volcano,
fresh from the dark sands of Siberia,
the brown steppe eagle circles and waits,
watching for weakness, searching
for carrion, leg feathers bristling,
shoulders hunched like a hunting wolf.
Exultant, it swoops down
on a yellow wagtail,
barks like a crow as it revels
in the taste of blood. I see
the bright buttery feathers
sticking to its wet tongue.
Feb 11, 2014
Feb 11, 2014 at 11:09 PM UTC
***** clouds smudge
across heavy skies
laden with tawny soot
sagebrush steppe glows
under jaundiced light
blazing wildfire summer
Jul 12, 2021
Jul 12, 2021 at 10:12 AM UTC
this is my star, david can have his, this is my claim over anything of this world, a little spice, hardly a castle, or an empire, a harem or millions in the bank account; a private education or ancestry stretching back to the crusades in up-kept and tidy memory like some duke of Burgundy.
only today did i discover bohemian Istanbul
sitting in a kitchen cabinet next to
a bottle of extra-virgin olive oil...
barely drank... not to the palette of some,
anise, hardy recognisable in curries,
but infuse it with alcohol and the story changes,
Europe and the long lost history of
the Ottomans, and indeed the Turks,
Muslim, steppe people, and therefore drinking
people. bahramji & mashti playing
in the background, a shisha pipe in my hand
(portable)... and today's discovery... white
absinthe! the moment i realised, i was squeezing
lemon juice into the glass... and to my idiotic
amazement the potion started turning milky...
just like Hapsburg absinthe (98%, £40 a pop)
or la Fé(e)... oddly enough not all absinthes turn
milky if diluted with water... for example
Czech red and Czech blue and even green don't
turn milky... because the Czechs drink it like
***** in shots... unlike the other versions where
you take the sloth route and prolong the feeling
of the warming anise... that's because they contain
worm-wood. but this Turkish absinthe, i'm amazed!
small world in terms of bumping into people,
but an even smaller world to discover different
cultures in your vicinity... i should have come
across what i'm drinking sooner (it's called Rakı),
but since it's not mine i will not over-indulge even
though i know the owners of the bottle do not
appreciate anise on their palette, unlike
what diogenes the cynic said:
i like best the wine drunk at the cost of others;
me? i indulge in what i buy, because i own it,
as i can't over-indulge the company of others.
May 12, 2016
May 12, 2016 at 4:07 PM UTC
A dance
in the
flight ingenious
a team
snare at
yip afield
this fraught
license overland
altogether so
nil in
sides of
play but
torturous slide
as mortals
divisive incline
to march
afoot lawn
Feb 5, 2018
Feb 5, 2018 at 6:28 AM UTC
Sail with me onto the dreamy
Blackened waters evermore
Miles from the distant shore
Another world to call our own.
Perhaps there is no planet here,
No tranquil steppe to this precipitous realm
Where the pressure aches the whole way down
Weightless of a thousand atmospheres
My brain quakes a broken stone,
Transparent eyes in no place
This etherized abyss communicates
A world embarked from the known
Deeper, deeper must we go
Through the darkened deep thorough
A gift of its own; this fathomless dome
A grounding place to guide us home
A thousand times climb below,
A million spheres by stars unknown
And yet every night in moonlit sight
I swim from shore, a stolen beau
On fog-filled days I do not see
Time comes to pass without a scene
To skip along that broken sea
And return to toiling soils
For when the weather agrees, a diving odyssey
Where I sojourn that boundless time;
With a murky message from the void that pines
To a solemn soul's menagerie
Socketed-shapes rapidly move to trace
The walls of my sailing-quarter
Eyes wide-shut in dumbstruck horror
In the darkness; my pale face
Drowning in the pitch
Dismembered hands claw for the portal
In that frozen furled, immortal
Blind fringes skitter deep-dark fish
One day into this place I will sink
And of the land cease to think
To call unto other curious souls
From that eternal deep below
Jan 3, 2018
Jan 3, 2018 at 8:03 PM UTC
Feeling - really emotionally
And filling
phrases
From solid, continuous rings
Consistent - Chain...
He can be saved
A ship destined to sink.
Agent Sea of the massive desert,
Build a forest on the steppe...
My feeling disappears in the chain,
You'll see you until...
Mar 18, 2020
Mar 18, 2020 at 10:10 AM UTC
The steppe beguiled,
Unfriended by innocence,
Renders powerless the Seraphims,
Within the inner citadel.
The primordial whims,
Engulfs the spirit,
Impulses with unshaken strength,
Charges in, in coaxion.
Plain hues of tinted shades,
Delights the spirit,
Yielding unto the colourful disharmony,
Assailing its walls.
Berefted dignity,
Misses its way,
To converge with shame,
The eden pigmentation.
#El_Magnifico™
Jun 30, 2017
Jun 30, 2017 at 6:27 PM UTC
Oh ye men of Greece and Rome,
Too long have ye laboured,
Feel you not what is to come,
the grass by the wall of the ruin?
Leave ye down your tools, ancient peoples,
know you not what is to come?
See you not the pass of many years,
the grass through pavements old?
Great enterprise never sprung from a fertile land,
Go ye into the desert, and there build your temples,
Amongst the sands and beneath the sun,
where grass can never grow.
Here the lines and here the verse,
Here the vaults and chimneys,
Hark the turning of the days,
eek the tall and terrible days.
Lo, the falling of a chimney,
Lo, the crack of stones to splinter,
Lo, the old oak tree stands yawning.
better to build from bushes and thorn.
Have at your lawnmowers, ye council men,
And see what good it does you,
Think ye can halt the rise and fall,
of strong towers left to ruin?
Have at your anoraks, and have at your coats,
Clouds gather above and rankle the parapet,
Here stood a roof, here a joist, here a beam,
blackened in the soot and flames – here falls the rain.
Have at your sickles, and have at your hammers,
Go back to steppe and sod from whence ye came,
And never more disturb the sepulchral vaults,
where lie long dead men of Greece and Rome.
Feb 22, 2015
Feb 22, 2015 at 1:05 PM UTC
missed opportunities for a burned out soul
potential thrown away lackadaisically in the fleeting moment
a school-of-thought to ruin a lifetime of work
leaving you in the cold, wet dirt
you know it's bad when crying is enjoyable
an actual show of emotion comes as bleak relief from the never-ending steppe of non-existence
an true yet brief feeling; enough to rekindle the dampened spirit
but crushed without a thought by the elapse of tissues
the ducts are dry, nothing left but shudders
back to normality and banality
same old, same old, so they say
more powerful than words and transient passion
and i greet and embrace it like a returning master
clinging to it despite my unchained body
"hello master, nice to see you again"
Aug 19, 2015
Aug 19, 2015 at 5:51 PM UTC
I am the skeleton of the memories jiggling to Beyoğlu
the heart is swinging in my chest of my dreams
my eyes are not hollow, my hands are still warm
I’ve found the song I need to sing
I am whispering into the darkness, when will I be born
A lake, a swan of Anatolia, an eastern hollyhock
a steppe is steeped within me now
a train loaded with hope at Haydarpaşa
a lovely dog, a question, and then
I am whispering into the darkness, when will I be born
Koray Feyiz
(Translated from Turkish by Koray Feyiz)
Oct 15, 2016
Oct 15, 2016 at 8:13 PM UTC
Everything’s broken, shattered,
Scattered completely asunder.
And I’m left as a steppe mat grass.
Only crows go round and thunder.
Only crows go round, and their wings
Chase out my reckless life.
I should run after her, but I’m beat.
I can’t catch up with her. I’m lowlife.
I’m lowlife. I can’t hand her back.
I would apologise! I'd confess!
Everything went amiss with us.
It’s a shame that we'll get no chance.
May 26, 2025
May 26, 2025 at 6:03 PM UTC