I find Somerset
so much more in focus
Than any surrounding counties
Perhaps A Glastonbury Romance
Opens my eyes to the world evoked within
Drawing Arthur home to Camelot
Beguiled by Temple and Chalice Well
More than the festival colourscape kaleidoscope
Blinded out by the dark castle keep on top of the Tor
Marrilion send their chords soaring to the stars.
Fairie folk shield their ears against the feedback
Leaving me to arm myself against Timnitus
Until I settle to the gentle harmonies of the acoustics
Between bursts of heavier metal torment
Melding Woodstock to the Mendips
Waving us all off to Avalon with songs in our hearts
Before the big bands bring us back down to Earth
With a Sound Of Silence that isn’t Simon Or Garfunkel
But the snoring of sleeping Knights in dreams of chivalry
Beneath hills dead, not alive to the Sound Of Music.
The latrines are as legendary as their setting
If Excalibur were here
I wouldn’t want to be King
Not if it meant hauling the sword from that sludge-stone seat.
I hold my nose to get past as though crossing the Somme
Until upwind in the open hashish wonderland
That leaves me so stoned that I need no drugs of my own
Flowers lose all perfume and take refuge and root in women’s hair
As though the sixties
never left us to the ravages of punk and Ska
Sweat smells good when no one else has washed for a week either.
Samosas and flapjacks, washed down with Scrumpy Cider
The Ambrosia here was anything but tinned rice
pudding.
I walked among the gods and made merry with Merlin
Till morn, when I tasted only my own bloated tongue
While the fairies took the fun and Morgaine laughed
in my face
Bewitching me with a headache from Hell that only
Grail-water could cure
Till a maiden dismisses my demons with a
chocolate drop and a kiss
A stranger being friendly just for the sheer Heaven
of it, Damsel
To the rescue of this errant Knight who takes more
alcoholic apple-juice
In her honour to start the whole cycle happening anew
as my mouth
Adjusts to the
new day and seeks out fresh sweet sensations to savour.
Ankle grazes guide ropes and the lost boy stumbles in
a sea of tents
To become one with grass and greenery amidst the mud
that claimed
A boot from him and many shoes from other strollers
around the court
Of the last of the Pendragon Dynasty touched by the
Sun, where many
Kiss their clothes goodbye to commune closer to
nature among the trusted fellow travellers caked in mire-muck to resemble the bog-beast terrors knights once
slaughtered.
Finally reaching the sleeping bag that was home for
the whole weekend
As the Once And Future Festival winds to a close with
a final encore
And this weary traveler waves farewell to the Court
Of King Arthur to Head North towards less focussed modern times and a touch of
work to earn The means to come back on such strange pilgrimage on some future
quest.
GLASTONBURY (Rhyming version)
Traveling with a great big heavy book
Pausing from page once in a while to look
At the World I’m about to abandon for that of fairy tales
I
realize I have crossed a border but the Nun sat next to me fails
To see the spectacular change in
landscape
Into which I can barely wait to escape.
Reading John Cowper Powy’s A
Glastonbury Romance
While seeing Somerset come to life
with every glance
From book to passing scenery, a county given clarity
And focus that could only intensify
once intercity
Travel let me experience the air of Arthurian legend
That dominated more than the concert I
was to spend
The weekend at, Man. I was tripping on
nature without
The
hash for cash proffered about
by Woodstock Two
Festival folk who shared
strange pilgrimage with me
I was
tripping out on hill and Tor and ... oh, so much to see
I
was going from black and white
to colour vision
The concert by Baez, & Marrilion might have been on television
I was
blown away by the sea of tents and those awesome hills
Wondering why anyone felt the need for taking pills
Or stuff to snort, when all it took
was the imagination getting
caught
On the spectacular Mendip location of Mallory, Merlin, and Camelot
It was only the smell from the
legendary latrines that got
Up my nose and brought me down to
Earth and the old sense of reality
The music deafened my daydreams
with earwax melting clarity
As the festival threatened to pull my senses from Glastonbury’s spell
The enchantment was not going to be taken by bad toilet smell
I clutched the book like a talisman against the
rarefied dream
Dissolving. I know how ludicrous this
might seem
But if the book could help me immerse
myself in my mystical roots
The rain turned field to quagmire that stole one of my boots
Then the Sun came back out and I really started to bake
I wondered if I descended from my mythical regal namesake,
And watched the clouds swirl and
unfurl over the top of the Tor
Neglecting the gig and
concert that I actually
came out for
My senses fell in love with Somerset
and this May I may get
To find out if the old magic remains
when I go to Weston Super Mare
Avalon, Arthur, and Guenevere may well be waiting for me there
Or the magic may have faded and I may
see another pretty panorama
I’ll be re-enacting the Civil war so I will be in period armour
But from a different era than
that which I associate with Somerset
It’ll be a different adventure this
time. It’ll still be great though, I
bet
I won’t get to touch Excalibur but the
magic will still touch me
No place ever looked or felt so real.
I’m going home, and I feel so happy.
© Copyright. Arthur Chappell
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