Gods of the misty lands – a poem by Alexandra Fössinger

Gods of the misty lands 
 
[B]ut it is only what happens, when they die, to all mortals. 
The sinews no longer hold the flesh and the bones together, 
and once the spirit has let the white bones, all the rest 
of the body is made subject to the fire's strong fury, 
but the soul flitters out like a dream and flies away. 
– Homer, Odyssey 
 
 
The Gods forced into the here and now 
 
On the plains they hide 
in the forests the bogs and the stones 
the Gods of misty lands 
the Gods of trees of moss of earth –  
receding giants  
without conscience or fault. 
 
They’ve nothing left to feed on  
but the spaces in between, 
the sacredest spots ever 
disfigured by mankind. 

Nevertheless, 
we clad the dark ages in splendour,  
nevertheless, 
we’ve forced them back – 
nature’s gifts brutalised  
into harm. 
 
Who is to blame? 
Nature was full of gifts. 

And Gods aren’t solid. 
The nature of nature is not to be solid, 
even rocks mutate 
as Gods transform. 
 
 
How it came to be  
 
The summer of 1817 was frost without light,  
and on Lake Geneva Miss Shelley   
unleashed her beast into the world –  
a human-made God, a Romantic  
automaton, as we stepped  
into the industrial sun. 
Away from ourselves. 
 
What do dreams become,  
when the dreamer is no longer hungry?  
Deprivation of food gave us visions. 
A little less than what is wanted 
makes us humble and sharp, 
but to have one’s fill leads to  
more (empty) hunger,  
and more. 
 
Some things we cannot speak of 
as idea, only the thing in itself.  
We drove ourselves away from the thing  
as it was, too fast for the mind  
to follow the body. 
 
And the body is matter, and symbol. 
We wouldn’t let go, broke ourselves  
down to nothing, to see how unreachable  
we could possibly be. 
We gave up the soul for the matter. 
 
Who knows, perhaps only  
transhumanists will learn the horror  
of being imprisoned forever.  
 
 
Re-becoming shamans  

Shamans were messengers. 
 
When we are born we start  
only seemingly off as mere body,  
filled with hunger and greed. 
 
Yet we are coming from somewhere. 
Always from somewhere,  
and the memory lingers. 
We are as spiritual as newborns as  
we will not be again later in life –  
except, perhaps – some – in the  
lonesome wake of a passage. 
 
Only the untouchables never lose it.  
They have to take up the fight  
for all others. 
 
The shaman knows 
there are two kinds of madness: 
the falling out of oneself, dangerous to others,  
material megalomania; 
and a descent into the self,  
the knowledge of presence’s intensity.  
 
When we become feral, the dumb one gets violent,  
the sage more knowing. 
 
Ask the birds who painted Grotte Chauvet. 
They will give you the answer: 
materialised spirit. 
 
We’re too awake to dream, even sleep now, 
human experience displaced by rules  
learned by heart without heart. 
How can the dreamer coincide  
with the self wide awake? 
 
 
What the spirit world is doing in its defence 
 
Is the spirit world, too, growing more evil,  
did we force our conscience upon it? 
 
The cold lemony light in autumn  
will be at its most beautiful again 
once mankind is gone –  
no one to see it. 
Animals on land, in the seas  
are forming an army. 
 
The nature of nature: what we see  
as double, is one. Nature is merciless,  
deadly,  
it has no remorse. 
  
It is –  
full of gifts. 
 
Listen; if we do not glide back  
into original silence, 
it will have us. 
The Gods of misty lands reclaiming their place. 

Alexandra Fössinger is the author of the poetry collection Contrapasso (Cephalopress, 2022). Her work is published or forthcoming in Tears in the Fence, The High Window, Frogmore Papers, Reliquiae, Mono, La Piccioletta Barca, and the White Stag Spirit anthology, among others. She is mostly interested in the spaces between things, the overlooked, the unsaid.