North—north—
the wind like a wolf-whistle, white and whistling,
north—north—
the night of the north flares like a blue-black banner of frost.
O cold conflagration! O frozen fire of the Baltic!
You burn without flame, you blaze without heat,
a whiteness more savage than any red ember.
The fjord is a furnace of ice,
a black crucible, seething with the invisible blaze.
The sky is a scythe of frozen lightning;
the stars strike sparks against the midnight hull of heaven.
Listen—listen—
the long slow moan of the pine-trees
like the chanting of a hidden coven of gods.
The ash of worlds—Yggdrasil—
stands darkly luminous,
every root a serpent of silence,
every branch a white torch of frozen fire.
Sap surges like silver blood;
it sings, sings, sings in the secret marrow—
the deep rhythm, the dark pulse of the Mother.
And the Machine—
the Machine mumbles its metallic malediction.
It hisses its hymn of hollow progress.
It hums and hungers, a sterile whore of iron.
Break it—break it—break it!
Thor’s hammer must fall,
and fall again, and fall again,
till the wires are worms,
till the turbines are torn to splinters of frost.
O Mother of beginnings, abyss of unending conception,
Mother of the dark sap,
Mother of the blue-black tide,
rise—rise—rise!
Shake your sea like a white-fire cloak,
let the ice-bergs clash like cymbals of crystal,
let the serpent of Midgard tighten its ring
and crack the pylons like dry bones of glass.
Better the wolf’s wide mouth,
better the spear’s sudden spasm,
better the sea’s cold kiss—
than the machine’s monotonous hum,
than the dead electric dawn.
Better the fierce fertility of frost
than the infertile circuits of the steel.
Hear it—hear it—
the Norns beneath the roots
muttering their rune of ruin.
Not punishment—inevitability.
The counterfeit collapses into its own vacancy.
The false light flickers out.
The ice-fire consumes without smoke.
And the gods—
not far, not high, but here—
in the salt breath of the wind,
in the black belly of the sea,
in the pine’s patient, sibilant song.
Names melt like hoarfrost in their heatless flame—
Baldr, Christ, Skadi, Artemis—
all but masks of the One living breath.
Down—down—
the cities fall, the towers topple,
the Machine dies in the white conflagration of ice.
And the world, unbound,
sings in the slow, unkillable rhythm:
the pine will spear the sky,
the raven will write the air
with black, untranslatable syllables,
and the Earth, rewilded, re-deified,
will breathe her dark sap again,
a cold, unending blaze of life.
North—north—
the wind like a wolf-whistle, white and whistling,
north—north—
the night of the north flares like a blue-black banner of frost.
O cold conflagration! O frozen fire of the Baltic!
Burn, burn, burn—
till the Machine is a memory of ash in the mind of the Mother.
