The Sun's Funeral
#33 of poetry
Many scholars see in the the figure of Sir Gawain a pre-Christian, and possible pre-Roman, Sun deity, adapted into the form of a folk hero as what not uncommon for figures of Celtic mythology. His red armor, his heraldic device of a Pentagram, that his strength was purported to increase as the sun rose, reach an apex at noon, and then decrease as it set are all sited as evidence.
Actual identification with any particular deity, however, has been inconclusive. Much of pre-Roman Celtic myth is lost, and we may be never be able to do more than speculate what sun deity--if this is, in fact, the correct character etymology--the figure of Sir Gawain once was.
The iron of the road was grey
And greyer was the sky.
The sun showed not a single ray,
So damned the way and damned the day
That Gawain went to die.
I was late to the wedding. Twas whose I barely knew;
They had asked me out of kindness, as the blessed sun might do
That shines on friend and foe alike, and pours out gold to both,
On the keeper and the twister and the breaker of the oath.
But at the village wall there came, across the chilly green
(For oh the sun is warm, my love, but oh the wind is cold.)
A slow and somber file muffled in sable saturnine.
(And only let the morning rise that I might glimpse the gold.)
Like sleepwalkers who see their way without the aid of eyes
They marched their softly leaden feet
Around the slow internal beat
Of low flute, wild and bittersweet
As when the evening dies.
Toward the lonely lich-gate bars the coffin bearers crept.
Behind the hindmost mourner I followed their sad step.
The waters of the ford were black.
Still blacker was the sky
Above the road that led not back,
Accursed be its winding track,
Where Gawain went to die.
The churchyard on the hilltop, where fading linden leaves
Fell unremarked, like tears dropped in the silent tidal heaves,
Was clean and stillness-scented. There mourners, faces blank,
With alabaster angels waited watching, rank on rank.
And there they brought the coffin. And there they laid it down.
(For oh the sun is high, my love, but oh the wind is low.)
Where sat it silhouetted upon the hill's green crown,
(And only let the morning come so I may rise and go.)
Then some stood forth a moment, to one by one draw near
With photographs, or fading flowers,
Or memories of long-lost hours,
Or farewells flowing forth like showers
Too late for him to hear.
They left their blooms, they said their piece. They left him lying there.
Though I felt an intruder, I stood and stayed to stare.
The shadow of the arch was deep.
The bridge was builded high.
Above the chasm fathoms steep,
Where creeping things forever creep,
Where Gawain went to die.
"This is the funeral of the Sun, Stranger, that you behold,"
The last and hindmost mourner said, his eyes and voice were cold,
"And we, his friends and family. Who is there more bereft?
The sun is gone and left us. Now there is nothing left.
Now noon shall be as black as night. Now buds shall bloom no more."
(For oh the sun is far, my love, but oh the wind is near.)
"Now winter shall be always, now ice shall choke each shore."
(And only let the morning break so that the clouds may clear.)
"Now earth shall drift through space alone, unmoored from gravity
And only in this place where he
Lies stiff and still eternally--
And only that of memory--
A little warmth shall be.
Drink deep the evening light, stranger, across the fruitless plain,
For soon it will have faded. You will not see it again."
"There keeping vigil by the stone where no name yet is writ
His brother kneels, who mountains built from river mud and spit.
And there in tears his mother, who sits above the sky
Upon a throne of twenty-seven stars, and she nearby
Is his young widow, once a priestess of a warrior land,"
(For oh the sun is soft, my love, and oh the wind is hard.)
"He fought three hundred demon-suitors off to claim her hand."
(And only let the morning light that I may turn homeward.)
"And there his little daughter, who never now will be
Wed to the best hunter on earth,
Nor sail the sky's crystalline girth,
Nor to the northwest wind give birth,
Nor set her people free.
His son, foretold messiah, would save all the forlorn,
But that will never happen now. He never will be born."
We watched the casket sinking, as if, twelve hours gone by,
It would arise across the opposite side of the sky.
"And I was the sun's murderer," he said, "I cut him down.
I go from here to writhe, in agony, forever bound.
They shall drip venom in my eyes, and acid on my face,"
(For oh the sun is set, my love, and oh the wind awakes)
"They shall gouge out my bowels even as they grow replaced,"
(And only let the morning be for what the morning makes)
"They shall twist me forever in the lowest mouth of hell.
For my hand held the dagger hid
That cut his throat, which God forbid,
And so," he said, "For what I did
They hurt me. They do well.
Eye has not seen, nor heart conceived, the malice of the curse
That I toil under evermore. But I deserve far worse."
His shield was as the sun at noon
Was as his flashing eye.
His blood was scarlet on the dune,
It paled and darkened very soon,
When Gawain went to die.
When looked I up, I was alone. The grave was sealed with loam.
I went not to the wedding. I went not to my home.
The night was all about me. It deepened past the dawn,
And deeper ever darker for years has it rolled on.
Cold I wander, blind I wonder, if I had followed not
(For oh the sun is gone, my love, and oh the wind is too,)
The funeral uninvited, would this night be my lot?
(And only if the morning came, I know not what I'd do.)
Was I the solar gravedigger by witnessing? Did I
Condemn the world in dark to stay?
The night grows darker every day.
Oh damn the hour and damn the way
The sun has gone to die.
Though yet I walk the weary world in searching for the dawn
Never will I find it. The sun is wholly gone.
The world was frozen in the night.
The wind was chill forlorn.
And some say there is faintest light
And some say things shall be aright
When Galahad is born.