Conception

Upon that loom the Tree’s wet-whiteners moisten,

Woven in the linen-webbèd skein

Of gossamerèd undergarments first

The fresh and fallen fruit, a shooting star

A’landed in the marshes of the crane

And white stork’d fields of Fensalir, is cloth’d,

Which all its scintillating fate enclothes,

(---They say those strangely sweet and shrouded maids

who crone enclothe the soul with fate are fierce

and monster-borne, from out of time’s imagine :

cruel, some say, to steal a star, and lock

it fast within the binds of matter’s fetters,

when it once within the sway of upper

boughs did leaf-enfolded lightly dance,

but such indeed is growth from humble seed --)

And cradled in this swaddl’d matrix, lies

Within the arms of fairy-follow, wing’d

And swan-and-stork encloakèd maiden, who,

When shrouded triune loom-enchanters’ dance

Decides in secret congress whom the soul

Shall mother meet in womb’d embrace, and then,

Deliver’d to the dwarves the lunar-linen-

Clad and stellar-blossom’d soul, to forge

And form an embryonic mold, shall then

With swift and upward wings deliver fresh

Into the waiting mother’s womb, where she,

Who carried soul from depths, enchants a song

The step of which the wyrded sisters danc’d,

Within whose lilt the embryo now dreams.

We rise up, then, from lowest low, below

The earth’s foundations, then upon the lap

Of Mother Earth we mother-birth-bestowèd

Find ourselves from first and never-knowing

Twinkle, upper-foilage fallen, here.