La Vie de Moi

They had gathered beneath the green tent, There where whitens a pale tree-trunk, naked, There where whitens a pale linden trunk,

By the linden tree, by the young linden, The linden trunk
White and naked.

At the fore, shaggy, lean, hoar of head, Moves the wizard, as old as his runes; He has lived over two thousand moons, And the ax he inhumed.

On the far lakes he loomed

Long ago.
It is his : the first blow

At the trunk.

And two priestesses in their tenth Spring To the old one they bring.
In their eyes
Terror lies.

Like the trunk their young bodies are bright. Their wan white
Has she only, the tender young linden.

One he took, one he led,

To the trunk roughly wed, A white bride.
And the ax rose and hissed- And na voice was upraised And then died.

Thus the first blow was dealt to the trunk.

Others followed him, others upraised

The age-old bloody ax, That keen, flint-bladed ax:

The flesh once, The tree twice

Fiercely cleaving.

And the trunk reddened fast, And it took on a face.

Lo,-this notch is a nose, This-an eye.
The flesh once,
The trunk twice-

Till all red was the rise
And the green crimsoned deep. On the sod
In the red stains there lies

A new god.