Song To Sequana (Burgundy, 100 BC) and other poems by Tim Miller

SONG TO NEHALENNIA (NETHERLANDS, AD 200)   Lady, here are offering for all those whose business has to do with ships the ones from here to Albion & back and the prow you always lean upon;   Lady, here are offerings for all those whose business is with the worked earth the ones with and herbs and flowers and all the fruits piled upon your lap;   Lady, here are offerings for all those who have ceased with commerce and died our sons in the sea and our fathers in the ground and the Dark World’s dog always as your side;   Lady, here are fresh loaves from all those that have desired your altar and temple and shrine the ones who follow your miles to the water theirs and our mothers the long background of you.   LOOKING FOR NERTHUS (AD 100) for Jenny   The priest senses a new weight in the wagon and it’s driven by boat to the mainland and wheeled with rejoicing from place to place:   the pulling cows are feted and a new festival for the goddess is founded, food and thanks for the draped wagon, and all   weapons of war hidden from her presence. When she’s had her fill of adoration she’s returned to her island and her lake   where she’s washed among familiar confines of grove and temple and shore, where she’s bathed along with wagon and hangings and wheels:   the image of a woman washed with lake water and carried like the chariot does the sun, or like the buried wagons   do the dead, bronze sun and horse and wheels: not the first woman drawn so and not the last goddess, someone preceding her perhaps,   only the wheels and the wagon and the woman remembered, pulled by this or that animal, woman of some or other name,   this or that grove or lake, this or that land or island all for her, a mystery, since the slaves who bathed her are drowned in the lake   for their knowing but necessary touch, for the dire but brilliant revelation that with everything they give, the gods are hard.   SONG TO SEQUANA (BURGUNDY, 100 BC)   Source of the Seine, shrine and woman of the spring sanctuary to water’s sudden appearance doorway to underground and old elsewhere place to abide and feel close to the dead close to some culmination of the landscape —elsewhere a grove, elsewhere a rock, elsewhere a single venerable tree, and here a spring— draped lady in your boat, diadem on your head, I bring a bronze body for my brother I bring a wooden leg for my neighbor I bring a stone head for my own ailment so that by such illustrations you might make the bodies of your pilgrims whole again.   SONG TO SULIS (BATH, 100 BC)   Before the Romans arrived there was only the water, warm, coming up from the ground, goddess of the deepest earth as well as eye of the sun, copious mother needing no buildings or mosaics but only pious bodies, maybe a thrown offering, bits of bronze or just some words at the water’s edge or immersed, reassurance during war or relief at plenitude, pilgrims all from a long way stunned to be on this same ground as their great distant mother and her hands of warm water.    ⊗ Cuween Chambered Cairn & other poems by Tim Miller ⊕ Bone Antler Stone (Museum Pieces) by Tim Miller r

Tim Miller’s most recent book is the long narrative poem, To the House of the Sun (S4N Books). His novel Bearing the Names of Many is forthcoming from Pelekinesis, and he also write about poetry, history and religion at http://www.wordandsilence.com.