Odd Perfumes (English / Welsh / French)

There are odd perfumes on the breeze tonight
I smell basements
and fabric softener
and autumn

it's time to think on autumn
it's a new territory
new challenges
new faces

"This could be the one!"

"That's what she said," he said

But no matter
soon it will be time to be off to engage the enemy

"Af i gwrdd â'r gelyn!"

We were only thirty
all tired and wretched
the enemy numbered three thousand and three score
and still we bathed our speartips in their blood
the men who went to battle ignorance

now is the season of continental rallying
of laying up for cold winter's scurmishes
for returning from my fitful
oh yes, fitful
summer slumber

As autumn drifts into my nostrils
I must hang my head in shame
utter shame
this season's experiments have all been dismal failures

Yes, judges mine
(all in my head, you fuckers should shuffle off to some fine old place
and leave me be...)
there has been progress
Great Works are underway!

still the only work that has mattered
to me
to the little secret man in my heart
i ddirgel ddyn fy nghalon....
here there has been no progress whatsoever

The little momo makes claims about my heart
and damn him if he weren't partially right
but that, that envoy I fear is a lost missionary
wandering about in murking depths
so dark an atom bomb would not illuminate them

always
always, like you Santes Dwynwen
about whose scant remains I did bring the infidel this summer
(for that I send you my humblest appologies)
I put my heart in sorry places
and were I Christian man as you were a Christian woman
perhaps god would make so many more pillar of ice...

Nay, néamoins

Pas de mauvais souvenirs ce soir...

soon
I will gather again with my bretheren
the story of the day will sweep me up and away
back into blisful martyred moments
where I can hone my disdain
and walk tall among those other resolute bastions of independence

And soon, oh the world around will chant its dirges
as the trees die for the dark half of the year
as the grass turns brown and the water sips on ice
and the ancestors, in real or imagined circuits, will tour the freezing, dying land

I love the autumn
for its promises of cleaning out the unwanted thoughts and objects
by its example that nothing
nothing made by man or god can stand in the way of entropy
for it's heralding the passing on of the old year
its natural massacre of beauty
and how it shows that even in destruction there is beauty
the panoply of colors before the White Lady arrives

I love the Autumn as Orpheus loved his muse
this is the time of reckoning
when Lady Rhiannon ended her burden
when she became the poem of Justice
now, long before the winter of anyone's discontent

soon it will the season of laying on blankets
of shivering on frozen nights
but before the Dark Half comes
before the White Lady arrives
there will be drinking and dancing
last furvent bursts of life before it's too dark too see
and this will be
as it has always been
my moment

Stalwart and soiltary
I will garner my shield and mail
I will paint myself blue and anoint my hair with lye
and I will face the certain arrival of our mistress' hosts
and Gwydion and Rhiannon as my awen
I will emmerge alive and strong on the Light Half

Ah....

There is no more a Celtic moment than the approach of Fall.