cas pian i leigheas | a hómós.
– Tred softly as you tred on my dreams.
but what does the horse chew?
– Memory.
A longing to wander tears my heart,
– Every path leads homeward.
That is home.
| Hold everything dear |
How does the wind listen, and the rain lament.
A quietness that holds memory as a fallen tree.
Another tree looks on, regarding the encounter.
” dont play with dead things’ a thrush chirps.
The tree which lays now next to the earth smiles;
‘When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured’ ( Hesse)
Red red earth and broken sky
The rock and bones.
Steady in the quest for a moment of silence.
The wind howled, not a lament, but an exhaustion.
The sun asked; ‘why do you hurt so?’
The wind paused and sighed. ‘ Though I may journey from place to place, as force, as obstruction, as change, carrying seeds, birds and gulls, changing seas and forms, in my core all I wish for is to settle and to travel no more and to simply stop here and be here and that to be all ‘
The sun hid a moment and looked to the cloud for some words to counsel the winds, but by the time the sun had returned the wind had departed leaving no trace other than scattered ferns.
“Perhaps we need not ask”
The tree and the leaves sighed to one another as the day began to hide.
“She will learn”
The tree said very slowly
” Turn pain into medicine”
The leaves sighed for they had left a long before the tree had finished his sentence, but the roots quaked and the earth turned, holding close the words.
” Who is she calling too?’
The moss has settled now to watch the scene.
The fern became agitated.
‘ Why should you always ask. These lands leave each to their own quest.’
A horse bounds on.
A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one’s suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death. ( Hesse)
( cas pian I leigheas is an ongoing conversation with the landscape of Devon. All images and film copyright to Beatrice Jarvis and may not be reproduced without permission.)
Urban re:passages 