Last we heard from that poetry-writing swashbuckling pirate John Bullock, a part-time mate on the Appledore, he was trying to impress a lass in a literary showdown.

But as September 22 marks the autumnal equinox, it’s time to embrace the darkness. Of the following poem, which Bullock wrote around the fall equinox in 1998, he said: “In folklore and in many belief systems, coming into this dark time of the year is considered ‘in between times’ in which the things you can’t define and can’t explain come out to play. This is the same reason that midnight is considered a magical time, as well as dawn or dusk, because it’s neither fish nor fowl, neither one thing or another, it’s something in between.”

Bullock, an avid reader of legends, attributes the inspiration of this poem to The Kalevala, a 19th-Century body of poetry encompassing Finnish oral folklore and mythology. 

“In The Kalevala, the world is created by this primordial wizard singer named Väinämöinen. He sings the world into being by naming things and thereby circumscribing what they are and what they are not,” he said. Defining something gives a person power over it, said Bullock. “When the Christian missionaries got to Iceland, they decided that all of the gods were demons and devils. Because once you call something a ‘demon’ it is no longer defined as a ‘god’ and it reduces its power considerably.”

Once again bring you some of Pirate John’s best prose and the inspiration behind it.

Dark Season

This is the advent of the dark season
When rigid patterned Day
Illuminated by Reason
Fades in the Coming Twilight

The primal Darkness now holds sway
From which everything once came
Before Logic lied-explaining away
All the secrets of the Night

We invoked the power in a Name
To cover the cracks where Chaos hides
And so we sought to bind the reign
of Nameless mysteries of the Night

But borders blur and boundaries slide
As the pendulum ever swings
And possibilities, banished, slip their ties
That once kept them from the light

Listen to the songs the Darkness sings
Escape the trap of Reason
Taste of all the nameless things
Freed in the gloaming season

Rage Not against the dying of the Light
Revel in the coming of the Night!

(my apologies to Dylan Thomas)

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com