The Sunday Poem

Here comes the Sun

I started thinking about the Sun and how we worship it. George Harrison wrote one of the best Beatles songs about it, some 60 years ago. It’s still lyrical, has not lost any of its warmth, and like the Sun, is timeless. And the Myth of Phaeton, son of the Greek Sun God Helios, is one of the foundations of western thought, giving us a potent image of the human psyche: Reason as the charioteer, and the two horses, one black and one white, the opposing human drives, perhaps an early image of the bicameral mind?

The spring sun has brought all this on; I hope you enjoy it.

Morning Sun Worship

A singeing Sunday morning sun is blasting on

My ageing skin basking in heat/Winter has fled and what’s the use

Of asking what we’re doing here

Consider the snowdrops

Just for one morning/Let me be a sun worshipper

How about the Egyptian Sun God Ra/So powerful he created everything

Ta Da!

Even himself

Consider the twittering birds

Ra knew nothing of other gods/I can google them

And find Helios, the Greek one/Who had a rebellious son

Phaeton who took the horses/That draw the Sun across the Heavens in a chariot

And lost control

Consider Phaeton

Zeus had to kill him to restore order/Order and good government

And my mother always said/Ordering is half of life

Ordnung ist das halbe leben

She was right but

Consider the sacrifice

We forgot that the God of Order/Demands sacrificial slaughter

The Ancients understood this cosmic/Law and the Aztecs spilled human blood

on a special stone we contemplate with awe/It was their big deal

Consider the story but/Consider only the Sun is real