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THE
MENTAL TRAVELLER
There
is said to be, in the County of Hampshire, in he parish of Up Marden, a
sinkhole which leads down into caves inhabited by the shades of ancient
Celtic heroes and goddesses, revered before the Jutes and Saxons harried
and fired the Britons from English soil.
A Christian church was built over the hole and in 1831 the vicar
Peter Cullford wrote that he had heard noises under the flagstones which
he took to emanate from the unpeaceful souls of those once cruelly
persecuted. The locals
still speak of The Marden Hole.
Humphrey Palmer: Records of S.England
from the Codex Porcorum (Hauer) 1902.
If
you are set on travelling
beyond the Marden Hole
Take
your coat for on that road
the wind bites to the soul.
Open
the Hut of Disquiet
where the rain shivers on the wall.
Pick
up the spear and the skillet,
the needle and fingerstall.
Walk
the underground shores of Horror
just off the Susceptible Isles.
Stop
at the dolmen, uncover
the casket of nervous smiles.
Take
it and turn down the valley
where the Snakes of Cowardice
hiss
in the slime of Self-Pity:
see that for what it is.
Stride
wide, have the world for parish,
to the latitudes of dirt
where
slut magazines in the rubbish
attest to feelings of hurt.
Decide
if you want to pillage
the boroughs of memory
for
races you caused to perish
and comrades you used to see.
Outside
the City trenches
where the Giant blows on his nail
then
turns for an intravenous,
let the ivory cask exhale
its
smiles—see the skull, now arid,
of the pretty Saint who denied
the
Princeling who for her ochred
the stones with his blood and died.
Take
the jawbone of Prayer and Panic
and cast at the Fi-Fo-Fum
so
he fall upon spire and attic
and go to Kingdom Come.
Pass
the chill bayous of the Passive
and the jungles of Confidence.
Stitch
on the shirt of Confession
in the scrap yards of Intents.
Hurry
home, aiming a wand at
the bank and shoal of Time
to
see if Death’s Dyke can be rattled
by flashes and magic of rhyme.
If
you come to the Ashes of Boredom,
move on, for they are impure;
nor
turn to North where the floes are,
the animals fewer and fewer.
With
luck you will glimpse from the Ridgeway
(before you stoop and leave)
many
rainy slates of Abstraction
into Destruction heave.
If
you are set on travelling
beyond the Marden Hole
Take
your coat for on that road
the wind bites to the soul.
Alan
Marshfield
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