In Praise of Night

A lot of the metaphors in our culture paint darkness, night, blackness as something inherently bad, but as an amateur astronomer, I wanted to redress the balance and do so in this poem. I'm also drawing on ideas from pagan mythology about the liminal space occupied by the faerie folk. As described well by Diane Purkiss in her book "At The Bottom of the Garden", these were seen as beings who occupied a space that was not of the earthly realm, nor of the divine, but a strange space belonging to neither.

Purkiss shows that there is often a dark side to the fairy folk, but I wanted to show another side, and on this I am drawing on the wonderful mythology of strange imps found in the Rupert stories, who are the unseen hands that scatter a magic dust to help nourish the harvest. 

There's also a nod to Ursula Le Guin, whose wizards of Earthsea include the Master Patterner, who lives in a forest glade, and draws out from patterns scene the true nature of the world.

And finally, the pattern of the poem follows the lyrical rhythm of the a fourth century hymn from Liturgy of Saint James : Σιϒησάτω πδσα Σάρξ βροτЄία.

In Praise of Night

The dark night comes with silence
And in the forest clearing I stand
Pondering the patterns so minded
And my staff held firm in my hand
The bats fly through, descended
In the blackness of the land

This is a our land born of faerie
As of old on earth they stood,
Strange beings, in human vesture
Seldom seen, scarcely viewed
And scatter dust, ever faithful
Growing harvest for our food

Stars appear rank on rank in heaven
Spreading path on the milky way
As the moonlight softly descended
Until the dawning of a new day
That the stars made fade and vanish
As the darkness clears away.