{"sf1_id":1709960,"sf2_id":"7ej6A7eW","title":"The Sun's Funeral","author":"Rob MacWolf","words":1031,"posted_at":"2021-04-23T17:58:00.000Z","tags":["Poetry","lyric"],"url":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1709960-the-sun-s-funeral","original_url":"https://sofurry.com/s/7ej6A7eW","image_url":"https://cdn.sofurryfiles.com/submissions/thumbnails/ac/99/ac992862-b7f8-42da-bd00-caf512f5540d","description":"#33 of poetry\n\nMany 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.\nActual 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.","content":"The iron of the road was grey  \nAnd greyer was the sky.  \nThe sun showed not a single ray,  \nSo damned the way and damned the day  \nThat Gawain went to die.\n\nI was late to the wedding. Twas whose I barely knew;  \nThey had asked me out of kindness, as the blessed sun might do  \nThat shines on friend and foe alike, and pours out gold to both,  \nOn the keeper and the twister and the breaker of the oath.  \nBut at the village wall there came, across the chilly green  \n(For oh the sun is warm, my love, but oh the wind is cold.)  \nA slow and somber file muffled in sable saturnine.  \n(And only let the morning rise that I might glimpse the gold.)  \nLike sleepwalkers who see their way without the aid of eyes  \nThey marched their softly leaden feet  \nAround the slow internal beat  \nOf low flute, wild and bittersweet  \nAs when the evening dies.  \nToward the lonely lich-gate bars the coffin bearers crept.  \nBehind the hindmost mourner I followed their sad step.\n\nThe waters of the ford were black.  \nStill blacker was the sky  \nAbove the road that led not back,  \nAccursed be its winding track,  \nWhere Gawain went to die.\n\nThe churchyard on the hilltop, where fading linden leaves  \nFell unremarked, like tears dropped in the silent tidal heaves,  \nWas clean and stillness-scented. There mourners, faces blank,  \nWith alabaster angels waited watching, rank on rank.  \nAnd there they brought the coffin. And there they laid it down.  \n(For oh the sun is high, my love, but oh the wind is low.)  \nWhere sat it silhouetted upon the hill's green crown,  \n(And only let the morning come so I may rise and go.)  \nThen some stood forth a moment, to one by one draw near  \nWith photographs, or fading flowers,  \nOr memories of long-lost hours,  \nOr farewells flowing forth like showers  \nToo late for him to hear.  \nThey left their blooms, they said their piece. They left him lying there.  \nThough I felt an intruder, I stood and stayed to stare.\n\nThe shadow of the arch was deep.  \nThe bridge was builded high.  \nAbove the chasm fathoms steep,  \nWhere creeping things forever creep,  \nWhere Gawain went to die.\n\n\"This is the funeral of the Sun, Stranger, that you behold,\"  \nThe last and hindmost mourner said, his eyes and voice were cold,  \n\"And we, his friends and family. Who is there more bereft?  \nThe sun is gone and left us. Now there is nothing left.  \nNow noon shall be as black as night. Now buds shall bloom no more.\"  \n\u0026nbsp;(For oh the sun is far, my love, but oh the wind is near.)  \n\"Now winter shall be always, now ice shall choke each shore.\"  \n(And only let the morning break so that the clouds may clear.)  \n\"Now earth shall drift through space alone, unmoored from gravity  \nAnd only in this place where he  \nLies stiff and still eternally--  \nAnd only that of memory--  \nA little warmth shall be.  \nDrink deep the evening light, stranger, across the fruitless plain,  \nFor soon it will have faded. You will not see it again.\"\n\n\"There keeping vigil by the stone where no name yet is writ  \nHis brother kneels, who mountains built from river mud and spit.  \nAnd there in tears his mother, who sits above the sky  \nUpon a throne of twenty-seven stars, and she nearby  \nIs his young widow, once a priestess of a warrior land,\"  \n(For oh the sun is soft, my love, and oh the wind is hard.)  \n\"He fought three hundred demon-suitors off to claim her hand.\"  \n(And only let the morning light that I may turn homeward.)  \n\"And there his little daughter, who never now will be  \nWed to the best hunter on earth,  \nNor sail the sky's crystalline girth,  \nNor to the northwest wind give birth,  \nNor set her people free.  \nHis son, foretold messiah, would save all the forlorn,  \nBut that will never happen now. He never will be born.\"\n\nWe watched the casket sinking, as if, twelve hours gone by,  \nIt would arise across the opposite side of the sky.  \n\"And I was the sun's murderer,\" he said, \"I cut him down.  \nI go from here to writhe, in agony, forever bound.  \nThey shall drip venom in my eyes, and acid on my face,\"  \n(For oh the sun is set, my love, and oh the wind awakes)  \n\"They shall gouge out my bowels even as they grow replaced,\"  \n(And only let the morning be for what the morning makes)  \n\"They shall twist me forever in the lowest mouth of hell.  \nFor my hand held the dagger hid  \nThat cut his throat, which God forbid,  \nAnd so,\" he said, \"For what I did  \nThey hurt me. They do well.  \nEye has not seen, nor heart conceived, the malice of the curse  \nThat I toil under evermore. But I deserve far worse.\"\n\nHis shield was as the sun at noon  \nWas as his flashing eye.  \nHis blood was scarlet on the dune,  \nIt paled and darkened very soon,  \nWhen Gawain went to die.\n\nWhen looked I up, I was alone. The grave was sealed with loam.  \nI went not to the wedding. I went not to my home.  \nThe night was all about me. It deepened past the dawn,  \nAnd deeper ever darker for years has it rolled on.  \nCold I wander, blind I wonder, if I had followed not  \n(For oh the sun is gone, my love, and oh the wind is too,)  \nThe funeral uninvited, would this night be my lot?  \n(And only if the morning came, I know not what I'd do.)  \nWas I the solar gravedigger by witnessing? Did I  \nCondemn the world in dark to stay?  \nThe night grows darker every day.  \nOh damn the hour and damn the way  \nThe sun has gone to die.  \nThough yet I walk the weary world in searching for the dawn  \nNever will I find it. The sun is wholly gone.\n\nThe world was frozen in the night.  \nThe wind was chill forlorn.  \nAnd some say there is faintest light  \nAnd some say things shall be aright  \nWhen Galahad is born.\n\n  \n  \n\n","series":{"name":"poetry","previous":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1709038-colony-collapse-disorder.json","next":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1711016-break-the-circle.json"}}