Balor Reborn
“Our cities, once bright jewels on the plain, are swept away in shards of shattered glass and buckled girder. In the rending shriek I hear the one-eyed king of giants speak.”
Photo by Bruno Van Der Kraan on Unsplash.
Surrealist Prophecies #9
The ninth in a sequence of surrealist prophecies written using the divinatory technique of automatic writing (with subsequent revision). The theme of the sequence is the collapse of our global civilization due to uncontrollable climate change, leading to a mass rejection of both faith and reason and the re-enchantment of our world among the ruins of our failed creations. Some of the poems in the sequence are set before the Fall and portray the spiritual and emotional dilemma of our current crisis. Some describe the Fall itself, and the strange changes in thought and perception that will be needed if any are to survive a world in which humanity has been radically de-centered. Some describe the world to come, a world newly alive with gods and spirits yet free of all dogma or fixed belief – a world of beauty and strange magic.
The ninth prophecy portrays the rise of the waters, and the washing-away of the great cities. The giants of Irish mythology – the Fomorians, or “undersea people” – are in the rushing of the flood, confident that no gods will oppose them.
Balor Reborn
A dim and distant roaring,
Then a crack
Like branches snapping
Then an awe-struck hiss
Of indrawn breath
Without a chance to scream.
As thick as melted chocolate,
Foaming mud
With rocks and chunks of concrete
Crushes walls,
Cracks windows open,
Carries cars away
And levels all our works
But leaves the wrecks
And skeletons of structure
Here and there.
The air is filling up with hungry birds.
The rushing waters of the sunless sea
Have broken past the borders
And have born
The bloated bodies of the newly dead
Like bobbing corks
Along the roaring stream
With mattresses
And bottles,
Plastic bags,
And cardboard boxes.
Waters of the deep,
In lightless caverns
And the great abyss
You made your home.
Oh, giants of the deep,
You sleep no longer.
Stronger than the chains
The gods once forged
To keep you from the sun
With mighty cries you’ve come.
And in the rain
As waters rise
Your eyes will shine again.
Our cities,
Once bright jewels on the plain
Are swept away
In shards of shattered glass
And buckled girder.
In the rending shriek
I hear the one-eyed king of giants
Speak:
“My name is Balor.
In another age
I marched against the gods
In pride and rage
And fell, defeated
By a flying stone.
I died that day,
But I was never gone.
Since long before
Your people walked the earth
I’ve known that I would know
A second birth
In rising oceans
And in fiery sun.
My eye is open,
And your time is done.
No skillful god shall come
To cast a stone.
My name is Balor.
I shall rule alone.”
Christopher Scott Thompson
Christopher Scott Thompson is an anarchist, martial arts instructor, devotee of Brighid and Macha, and a wandering exile roaming the earth. Photo by Tam Zech.