In the Cannstatter Wasen,
the Germans celebrate
their beloved drinking party:
the Stuttgarter Frühlingsfest.
In my traditional costume,
I move through the multitude,
and stop to scrutinize the ambiance:
wasted youngsters, wabbling adults,
expressions of joy, play, desire,
abstracted people staring at the void,
resembling philosophers statues
despite their lack of thought.
A majestic pole catches my attention,
larger than the gathering tents,
where people drink, jump, and dance.
Like a maypole on Beltane
the top bristling with flowers,
nobody seems to care, though,
tilting their heads up to the sky
to catch a glimpse of the beauty
of the stunning ornament,
we all ought to behold:
vibrant gorses, colorful primrose,
lilies of the valley, vivid marigolds
changing from orange to red
at the slightest blow of a gentle breeze
an unexpected eerie dread.
A blast full of whispers and muttering,
a whoosh of an old specter in my skull
neglects my privacy and relates
an unplausible story, a forgotten tale
of what that post once actually meant.
Folks and cattle on the first of May
once would go in circles around the flames,
towers of glowing light,
growing bonfires, a protective blaze
importuning demons and hexes
for the cattle’s sake.
Prior to chivalry, a concept still to be born,
folks would celebrate in a lecherous, unbounded mode,
thanking for fertility to an eponymous god,
the real fulcrum of the change to come.
So the hiss in my scalp concludes,
the vernal fable now dwells in me
while people satisfy their thirst
to loosen up, release the lust
they so long repressed,
unaware of the maypole
and the witches’ dance.
Drifting around in circles,
satiating their own thirst for liberty,
the absence of flames, their longed victory
over the old gods now forsaken.
When spring comes by
herds are now unprotected,
Belanus doesn’t bring the light of summer
but do the hisses of the hexes
for whom the sabbath pole,
unbeknown, is yearly erected.