There is a black butterfly in Your heart.
I cannot decipher the meaning
on a bright spring morning
when the May flowers blossom
and all the hawthorns are in bloom.

There is a black butterfly in Your heart.
I cannot decipher the meaning
at midday when the sun burns bright
and Maponos strums a song on His harp
with chords of sunlight brighter than the fires of Bel.

There is a black butterfly in Your heart.
I cannot decipher the meaning
at sunset as the blackbirds sing
the sun down and burning happy dancers dance
and talk and do the things that people do.

There is a black butterfly in Your heart.
I cannot decipher the meaning
until midnight comes and I follow
the funeral procession of the sun into darkness.
Until I walk with the dead sun into the depths of the Otherworld.

~

“Dead sun, dead sun, what are we doing here,
what are we doing here in this darkness,
darker than the dark side of the moon,
darker than the dark side of the sun?

“Dead sun, dead sun, what are we doing here,
what are we doing here in this silence,
more silent than the silence
when the King of Annwn died
and Maponos ceased to play His harp?

“Dead sun, dead sun, what are we doing here,
what are we doing here in this stillness
stiller than the places between
the dance-steps of His faery dancers,
the hoofbeats of the horses of His hunt,
the spaces between the beats of His heart?”

“Come deeper, come deeper,” says the dead sun,
“beneath the world’s chatter and words and images
that paint butterfly colours, come deeper, come deeper.”

~

The dead sun takes me to Your tomb in the Castle of Cold Stone.
Reminds me of how Your castle fell from the skies of Annwn,
circling four-cornered, from the songs of the mead-feast,
from the revelry, from the boiling of the cauldron,
from the passing of the mead-cup,

down, down, down,

into the Abyss,

into the place between
the end and the beginning of life and death,
the end and beginning of words and of worlds…

~

You’re dead – there are no words to express my sorrow.
You’re alive, only sleeping, there are no words to express my hope.

You’re dressed in black as if ready to attend Your own funeral.
Your hair is white and silver as the light of the moon
and the hairs in the manes and tails of the horses of Your hunt.

And Your heart, Your heart is red as the reddest
of the roses of Your queen who forever betrays You on May the first.

For You I plant five red roses in Annwn and a single rose above.

~

For you I sit here in the darkness, the silence, the stillness.
I listen to Your breath and the beating of Your heart.

At first it is felt, not heard, not seen.

Then I hear it, then I see it –
the dark flutter of the butterfly in Your heart.

“What is this? What is this?” My heart flutters in concern.
“Why has a black butterfly come to abide
in the heart of the King of Annwn,
the heart of the Otherworld?”

“Worry not.” Even death does not faze You.
You do not speak like a corpse
but like the most living of the living
and the brightest light in Annwn’s darkness.
“You are the black butterfly who flaps her wings in my heart.”

~

“Did You hear that?” I ask the dead sun. 

The dead sun has already fled – it is morning. 

“Did You hear that?” I ask Maponos.

He has already gone to play His harp.

We’re alone now, my King and I, butterfly and heart,
in the darkness, in the silence, in the solitude,
for a moment before the world’s call forces us to part.

I created this painting at a Beltane focused seasonal creative workshop with Two Birds Therapy and wrote the poem afterwards. It’s based on the dichotomy I always feel at this time of year between the beauty and energy of nature and the sadness of Gwyn’s death and my need to be alone with Him whilst others are celebrating. The black butterfly was the result of a mistake wherein I tried to make Gwyn’s heart redder but instead smudged black into it. For me this gave the piece its meaning.