A Wild God Comes to Table

I was introduced to a poem by contemporary poet Tom Hirons called “Sometimes a Wild God” and was immediately captivated by it. His language is so sensitive and gentle, his style is so surreal and evocative. He does a wonderful job capturing the primeval wildness innate in humanity and our ambivalent relationship to it. Normally that’s where it would end for me: a delightful new poem to add to my list of regular reading to which I can return on other occasions. But there was a single line that clutched at my heart and demanded a response: “The wild god stands in your kitchen.” Somehow that line seemed specifically directed at me, not so much a warning as a call to attention. It made me feel like I needed to go check my kitchen for some horned satyr making a mess of the dishes. Naturally, my mind went directly to the most constant and fecund source of ancient gods, animal urges, and eldritch magic in my life: my children. As any good and sensible father, my feelings towards the wonton cruelty, emotionality, and sheer unhinged rage of my kids is fraught and uncertain. On the one hand, they’re kids: their brains are developing and they’re discovering the world and their place in it in a very tactile way, almost like trial and error. It’s like they’re speed-running the last seven millennia of human evolution in the space of a decade. On the other hand, they’re just so damn….childish! Like, I really get it when Aristotle says that children are incapable of being good people. I don’t necessarily agree, but I get it.

At any rate, Mr. Hirons’ poem offered me an opportunity to explore that fraught and uncertain attitude. So what follows first will be Tom Hirons’ poem in its entirety, after which will come my response. You can find Tom Hirons at tomhirons.com.

Sometimes a Wild God

By Tom Hirons

Sometimes a wild god comes to the table.
He is awkward and does not know the ways
Of porcelain, of fork and mustard and silver.
His voice makes vinegar from wine.

When the wild god arrives at the door,
You will probably fear him.
He reminds you of something dark
That you might have dreamt,
Or the secret you do not wish to be shared.

He will not ring the doorbell;
Instead he scrapes with his fingers
Leaving blood on the paintwork,
Though primroses grow
In circles round his feet.

You do not want to let him in.
You are very busy.
It is late, or early, and besides…
You cannot look at him straight
Because he makes you want to cry.

Your dog barks;
The wild god smiles.
He holds out his hand and
The dog licks his wounds,
Then leads him inside.

The wild god stands in your kitchen.
Ivy is taking over your sideboard;
Mistletoe has moved into the lampshades
And wrens have begun to sing
An old song in the mouth of your kettle.

‘I haven’t much,’ you say
And give him the worst of your food.
He sits at the table, bleeding.
He coughs up foxes.
There are otters in his eyes.

When your wife calls down,
You close the door and
Tell her it’s fine.
You will not let her see
The strange guest at your table.

The wild god asks for whiskey
And you pour a glass for him,
Then a glass for yourself.
Three snakes are beginning to nest
In your voicebox. You cough.

Oh, limitless space.
Oh, eternal mystery.
Oh, endless cycles of death and birth.
Oh, miracle of life.
Oh, the wondrous dance of it all.

You cough again,
Expectorate the snakes and
Water down the whiskey,
Wondering how you got so old
And where your passion went.

The wild god reaches into a bag
Made of moles and nightingale-skin.
He pulls out a two-reeded pipe,
Raises an eyebrow
And all the birds begin to sing.

The fox leaps into your eyes.
Otters rush from the darkness.
The snakes pour through your body.
Your dog howls and upstairs
Your wife both exults and weeps at once.

The wild god dances with your dog.
You dance with the sparrows.
A white stag pulls up a stool
And bellows hymns to enchantments.
A pelican leaps from chair to chair.

In the distance, warriors pour from their tombs.
Ancient gold grows like grass in the fields.
Everyone dreams the words to long-forgotten songs.
The hills echo and the grey stones ring
With laughter and madness and pain.

In the middle of the dance,
The house takes off from the ground.
Clouds climb through the windows;
Lightning pounds its fists on the table
And the moon leans in.

The wild god points to your side.
You are bleeding heavily.
You have been bleeding for a long time,
Possibly since you were born.
There is a bear in the wound.

‘Why did you leave me to die?’
Asks the wild god and you say:
‘I was busy surviving.
The shops were all closed;
I didn’t know how. I’m sorry.’

Listen to them:

The fox in your neck and
The snakes in your arms and
The wren and the sparrow and the deer…
The great un-nameable beasts
In your liver and your kidneys and your heart…

There is a symphony of howling.
A cacophony of dissent.
The wild god nods his head and
You wake on the floor holding a knife,
A bottle and a handful of black fur.

Your dog is asleep on the table.
Your wife is stirring, far above.
Your cheeks are wet with tears;
Your mouth aches from laughter or shouting.
A black bear is sitting by the fire.

Sometimes a wild god comes to the table.
He is awkward and does not know the ways
Of porcelain, of fork and mustard and silver.
His voice makes vinegar from wine
And brings the dead to life.

Now with all that as the context, here is my response—an application of sorts, wherein I imagine the events Tom Hirons narrates in his poem play out in my own life.

A Wild God Comes to Table

By some guy

I stood in the late evening kitchen, washing up after a day of work. The children were just to bed. I was tired as I saw to my domestic duties of washing and setting right. I turned and found my daughter standing in the kitchen. “What are you doing out of bed?” I asked. “Have you forgotten?” she said. I looked again at my child. Something seemed darker around her. Her hair, usually unbrushed, seemed to me unusually disheveled, almost matted. I would swear I saw twigs and dead leaves among her auburn locks. Though the actual dimensions of her body were unchanged, it seemed somehow bigger, as though it filled more of the kitchen than she did. I looked at her face; something not her but strangely familiar looked back. There was the vaguest hint of horns on its head.

I stood, peering more closely at the apparition, trying to place where I’d seen it before. “Who are you?” I asked. It looked at me with the slightest hint of a knowing smile, not malicious, certainly wild. “I am…” it began, and stopped, as though knowing what it was going to say would not be appreciated, “I am hungry.” When it spoke, there was a faint sound of foxes in the night. But that can’t be right: we live in the city. There are no foxes here. I was about to get annoyed: we don’t have time for this, I thought, it’s bedtime. If the kids don’t get to bed on time, they’re going to be little monsters in the morning. But as it spoke, I was struck with the smell of dew and wet earth and flowers. I swallowed. It felt like there was a snake in my throat. I went to the cupboard, brushed aside some ivy, and retrieved a crust of bread. “I haven’t much,” I said. The kitchen seemed darker. I couldn’t tell if it was due to the apparition or the mistletoe in the lampshades. I offered the bread. The apparition received the offering. After taking a bite it said, “you’re bleeding.” I looked down at my side. Blood was seeping through my shirt. “Oh,” I said, “it’s been like that for as long as I remember.” My dog nuzzled my hand. “Don’t you remember?” asked the apparition. The snake in my throat coiled as though to leap out. “It…it’s just that it’s been so long,” I said. “I had to figure out how to live, how to make people like me, how to get a job and get by. I didn’t have time. I’ve just been so tired.” I coughed. The snake in my throat fell on the floor. It looked at me and in my own voice said,

“O mystery eternal. O breath of life

And death. All is and was and shall be again,

And I remember what shall be. Dance

The dance that leads to death, and sing

The dirge of death that brings to life again.

Art thou young? Be thou old and whiten

Thy heady locks of hair. Art thou aged?

Young become thou once again and feel

Again thy youth. Sing out the old and wild

Song.”

And as the snake spoke, all the creatures cried out in a symphonic hallowing, a cacophonous dissent. Somewhere a stag bellowed primeval enchantments to a hesitant lover. I could taste blood and smell sweat. Something inside me leapt like an otter. And I sang. I chanted Orphic chantments. I wildly rattled my thyrsus rod and conjured nymphic maenads to suckle snakes and rend flesh.

“I am the skylark and the wren. I am the stag in the woods, rattling bones and eating bark. I am the strong oak, the everlasting pine. I am the sun exulting in his strength. I am blood and sap and seed. I am the gods, and when the gods have passed away, I shall remain.”

* * *

I awoke the next morning. My throat was sore as jagged words slowly smoothed. My daughter was tired and grumpy. I dressed and went to work and forgot the wild god.

Dear reader, I will spare the commentary—a significant part of the process of writing is deciding what to leave unsaid. But please understand, if my work seems derivative, it is. It derives more from the genius of Tom Hirons than my own muse, who can be rather lazy and pedantic. Thank you for reading, and remember, if you see me struggling with my kids, it’s because I’m wrestling with an old god of my own. Show me pity.