Year’s End

If you would go abroad tonight, choose your path with care,
For the walls between the worlds are down, and there’s magic in the air.
The old year ends at set of sun; the new begins at break of day,
And in between the walls come down, and a far more ancient Law holds sway.
The Wild Hunt rides for love of speed and lets its prey run free;
The Green Man walks and calls the spirits forth from every tree.
The folk from out the hollow hills will dance ’till break of day,
And the one-eyed stranger at the door should NOT be turned away.
Don’t try to break the fairy ring, or chase the Wild Hunt on its track;
You just might reach your goal tonight, if you don’t mind not coming back.
The restless dead and stranger things are on the roads tonight;
If you meet that one-eyed traveler, be sure that you’re polite.
The walls between the worlds are down as the old year fades away,
And EVERYTHING is possible from set of sun ’till break of day.

Paul Haynie
10/30/2000

 

Notes:

When I finished “When the Tall Man Speaks”, I knew that I was in a position to quit the game. I had no idea of what I wanted to do for the eighth poem, and “Equinox” could do double duty, so I didn’t worry about it much. I did write another closely related poem (“Wild Hunt’s Justice”) in October, but it really didn’t feel like the Mabon poem to go with this cycle. So it remained a seven poem cycle for just under two years, and then this poem landed on me, and it was VERY clear that it was the missing eighth poem of the cycle. It is also the most intensely personal poem of the cycle.

This started with an incidental conversation with a theater cashier on (I believe) October 28. Given that Dementia and I tend to look like Ren Faire refugees most of the time anyway, she wanted to know what plans we had for Hallow E’en. The words clogged coming out of my throat, and I finally said, “Nothing special.” I had reached a point where I was trying very hard to look like myself all of the time, and fancy dress didn’t appeal to me as much as it once did. Beyond that, I was pretty much TRYING to believe the traditional interpretation of the holiday: It was the night between the years, when the walls between the worlds came down, and one put on a mask of horror because one wanted to blend in with the genuine horrors that were abroad at the time, and seeing people dressed up as their favorite fictional characters was beginning to strike me as both disrespectful and stupid. So I said, “Nothing special.”

Within two minutes, I had the first couplet of “Years End”, and over the course of the next two days I came up with six more. I sat down and put them in what seemed to be a logical sequence, and there was the poem.

Uncle Hyena