Help Stefan CampaignIf you can spare $1 then help support this site and change someone's life forever? Learn how and why on the Help Stefan campaign page. Or, if you liked the poems here donate $5 and get my Memories of Myth and Man eBook of poetry as a gift for your donation and support. |
Mabon's Mask poem by Dyfed Lloyd Evans
Mabon’s Mask
Sketch — a starting point of inspiration
Image from th past solidifies
In 3B strokes; where graphite curves
Create the bass relief of myth
made form once more
Large, protruding, sightless eyes
Lifeless teardrops stare blankly out
Set above a crooked blade of nose
and neat-trimmed beard
A face I can interrogate — ask of him
“Are you not Mabon, immortal Appollonic
youth, from whom my muse derives?
Huntsman; hunted and confined for such sad age
That your own name was lost to all —
Save that most ancient beast;
all-knowing salmon of Llyn Llyw.
He who set Arthurian quest
to free you from your stony prison cell.
Is it not you I draw?
Attempt to re-create?
Invoke by artist’s divination gift?”
Thus I draw you from abyss of memory
Make you breathe again in clay
A living mask, writhing in the hand
Flexing under moulting fingertips
Your song reborn.
Base mortal re-imbuing
Re-making the divine anew.
Anointed with fresh paint,
dried and set,
You shall, forever, hang upon my wall
Your tale re-told
Am within the instant of your birth,
you are confined again
Become another trophy
placed amongst
the heads of captured gods —
Frozen on my wall:
Their deeds and tales
reduced to naught but myth and memory.
Image from th past solidifies
In 3B strokes; where graphite curves
Create the bass relief of myth
made form once more
Large, protruding, sightless eyes
Lifeless teardrops stare blankly out
Set above a crooked blade of nose
and neat-trimmed beard
A face I can interrogate — ask of him
“Are you not Mabon, immortal Appollonic
youth, from whom my muse derives?
Huntsman; hunted and confined for such sad age
That your own name was lost to all —
Save that most ancient beast;
all-knowing salmon of Llyn Llyw.
He who set Arthurian quest
to free you from your stony prison cell.
Is it not you I draw?
Attempt to re-create?
Invoke by artist’s divination gift?”
Thus I draw you from abyss of memory
Make you breathe again in clay
A living mask, writhing in the hand
Flexing under moulting fingertips
Your song reborn.
Base mortal re-imbuing
Re-making the divine anew.
Anointed with fresh paint,
dried and set,
You shall, forever, hang upon my wall
Your tale re-told
Am within the instant of your birth,
you are confined again
Become another trophy
placed amongst
the heads of captured gods —
Frozen on my wall:
Their deeds and tales
reduced to naught but myth and memory.
This poem truly relates to the creative process. As well as being a poet I am also an occasional sculptor. Whilst looking through a sourcebook of Celtic art I came acrosss a carving that might be a possible representation of the ancient Celtic son-god Maponos, known in the Mabinogi as Mabon. As the ultimate figure of eternal youth this image fascinated me and I begen to sketch him. This sketch turned into a sculpture (as show in the image above) and the entire creative proces itself became this poem.
Navigation