The Monster In Spring

After the combat
I found my horns tangled
With cunning snowboughs
My claws had grown long,
Ice-tipped, crocus scented.
Lanterns were moving
On the lambing fields
While a wren gave me direction,
Pointed me at the blue woods
And the light of a frozen lake.

Wishing any who celebrate the season, a very beautiful Candlemass/Imbolc.

(no subject)

So the HoC decided to stand behind the government's first reading of the article 50 triggering bill, because the MPs are as cowardly as the Leave campaign was dishonest.

I was born in an English town. Since Roman times and before there's been a settlement on the spot; here Queen Matilda held secure from Stephen for a while, and ruled the South West from this, her little capital. Here the folk supported Parliament against King Charles I, and Roundway Hill, right close to the town, is one of those sites where phantom battles are still heard, ghostly cavaliers and roundheads fighting til doomsday. I was born some eight miles from Avebury Stone Ring, some fifteen from Stonehenge. Silbury Hill and the haunted long barrows were part of the landscape of my birth. If there's anything of heritage in the land you fall out of your mother's womb onto, then part of mine is a heritage of England, early, old, odd, magical.

But what is that worth? I'll keep the good, the poetry and plays and stories that inspired me. But this tatty nationalism, this pandering to racism and delusion? I'll have none of it, nor treat it with anything other than contempt, and no, I am not going to unite with fascists to create Airstrip Fucking One.

Fuck Brexit.