Poetica Pavonis

The Green Chapel

Written Summer 2023

This poem is my attempt to capture the feeling of being in the woods on a windy night. I've always felt there was an energy in the air on nights like that. The noise of branches and leaves shaking in the wind can be enough to lose yourself in, a noise so pervasive it becomes a deafening silence. The poem is also in large part inspired by the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, as well as the 2021 film interpretation The Green Knight , directed by David Lowery and starring Dev Patel.

On first reading the original story I had imagined the "green chapel" to be less of a chapel in the traditional sense, and more akin to something like a sacred grove in the forest, a chapel in the pagan sense, a place to commune with nature. The film's version of the chapel was a different interpretation which I nonetheless found both visually striking and compelling in its metaphor, a chapel that clearly was once grand and impressive, but through the years has fallen into ruin and been reclaimed by the green. Either way, similar feelings are evoked- a deep, spiritual connection to nature, a sense of isolation, of a sort of benign, introspective loneliness. The noise of the Green Knight himself echoes the sounds of a forest, of ancient and immovable trees creaking in the wind. Even for someone like myself who is not particularly religious, I felt the religious metaphor appropriate- nature is something bigger than us, something more powerful than us. That feeling of communion can be affecting.

Here's the poem itself. Enjoy!

My gods whisper in the wind.

I hear them creak as it blows,
Hear them bellow their defiance at zephyr's breath,
Daring it to bend them, to break them,
To throw them down with raging tempest,
To scatter their remains, to roar, to roar.

But to me, to each other,
They whisper.
The wind gives them tongues,
Gives voice to the silence,
To the words of these, my gods.

What wisdom they could share!
What secrets I could learn
From they who bear witness eternal.
Heirs of divine lineage,
They whisper.
Countless voices now,
A choir, as the winds roar,
And countless limbs tremble
And they whisper,
These ancients, my gods,
They whisper
And I listen.

They share no secrets.
No forgotten truths, no wisdom profound.
Revelation is below them.
They whisper joy and life and growth,
Memories of seasons past
And hope for those to come.
They whisper exaltation.
They delight in their tongues.
And these are the tidings of my gods.

My gods whisper in the wind.
But the skies tonight are calm,
And they are still.
Their tongues are still, and I am still.
I do not hear them.

And yet,
I remember the whispers.
I remember the joy.
And I remember the truth:
I am not a prophet, but a pilgrim,
Drawn here, driven here.
Alone with my gods, I commune.
A silent mass
In the green chapel.