The Song of the Woodsman

Hejana hejana hejana nethai
I am a woodsman, a woodcutter am I
I cut wood with my axe and my own wide eyes
I cut wood, and cutting, remain I

well aligned

with leaves and fire and woodsmoke
and willows and bones and cairns
remain I enshrined
in gray woodsmoke attired
my accoutrements ever new, ever fine

What say you there, you who stand upon the sky?
Seest thou not, you turned upside down,
that you are turned un-right?
that your smile is witnessed

a frown?

Oh and you seest not your crime, see I
Neither seest thou the payment
you shall make in time: repentance
and a burning fire set to ashen grime

You seek the Maid, I see
You seek the Diamond line
Would you take her from me,
were it she was mine?

Don’t answer.
No need.
She is not.
She is gone, she who once lived
Here in Quercetum. Who once stayed long
laughing round the flames that licked
her feet, pale glimpses
and sent shadows upon her azure hair
cyaneous hair, hair like like like
But I digress
And digressing
Readdress oh! To have the Maid
In Sight

All wishes sent to her
all dreams and desires too
and I: I am a Woodcutter: I know not
to woo

And you, Sirrah, do you?
You: speak not upon pain of mirth…
You do! I see you do!

I shall hang above thee and watch!
And watching yearn! And speaking learn!

Hejana hejana hejana nethai
I shall speak down to thee!
Nethana nethana nethana hejai
And I shall teach of stillness
and of silence
I shall opine

The irony I reserve
is the only child of mine
for I am otherwise childless
have no-one to share my wine
since the Diamond turned
down upward
and left my spiral line

And you want a moment, no doubt,
before my speech inclines
to think of Marms and Bankers
to pause and render merit to your brother’s
knife-wrought demise

To think back on your current past
And the vicious King of Lies
Oh yes, I know him
The Emperor has his ties

For the Sorcerer King
He is
Well he is what he is
A Northern Thing

And you, you are going
to repent before you reprise
repent and recoil

at your own hands and blade
ruddy red now all burnished like
blood on a taken bride’s downy thigh
gory slime, a gore like the long sift of time

Changing time! Lying time!
Relative time!

Here you should be laughing
Here there is sublimity,
and sublimity sublime
supernal, refined!

Changing time! Lying time!
Relative time!

And I climb this tree down toward you!
You there, Rebellious One!
Descending I shall climb
or fall, and falling climb!
My iron heels dug into the oak
And a rope tied to the stony earth
Above me and behind

And as I go
the leaves do fall
Look! They fall upon thy arched brow
acaved like a tomb and well
They fall upon those eyes of thine
agast like a ghoul new felled

All Lord-hewn fire are they, in their falling
All Lord-crafted bronze and amaranthine!
They fall, they fall,
as brothers go and lovers fly

as sweat drips

how she
drips

as blood cascades
pyrrhous

and you shall be born again
to live again in time!
to wander the Earth
to exist… to survive…

But now you hear me not
Your eyes occluded by leaves
And unseeing, you do not hear
And not hearing, you are blind

Well heya heya! New friend of mine,
that’s enough of that kind of speech.
Not here! Not I. I shall no longer sway and rhyme
except to tell you what you will truly hear:

In this garden everything is shy
and shy, we are wiser than the tide
that pecks away at the Oceanside
to form the gorgeous beaches –
the first that men do seize
and seizing, there they lie
with maids of honor
and dishonour maids

in pumpkin patches
and fields of hay

they lie and lie and lie

oh you want the answers
you want to win this game

but

I am no economy, no economy am I!
And this is no game
Life is no game
No game is life
Life is just that life is
Again I say!
Life is just that life is

Listen, Bone,
Here what you sew you reap
Here what I cut, I keep

Oh right garden, Quercetum
wherein one cannot lie
Oh sweet spot, Quercetum
wherein one cannot die
Holiness, grand sweeps of respite
In the Garden of the Emperor’s Bride
I would whisper
But I must sing must I!

Hejana hejana hejana nethai
One who cuts the willow wood, am I
One who marks the rood and sets the line;
One who measures and calms the sky;

Hejana hejana hejana nethai
I am a woodcutter, a woodcutter am I
Nethana nethana nethana hejai
I am a woodcutter, a woodsman am I

I climb I climb
I cut I climb
upon the fair Oaks: Quercetum
and also upon the Pines

Rising, I descend
To the peaks of the trees here
Rising, I release
and fall upon you:

who once did not see
the blind
I shall again
give sight

Hejana hejana hejana nethai
A woodcutter, a woodcutter
A woodsman am I

Read the Lyric from the Beginning