Ethusel - Sandy Denny

I saw a dark star against the black sky

Of a night thirteen hundred years long

It cast shrouding shadows upon the desert

Of the dark moons that formed in her eyes.

«On the … of her back the sun never smiled

And the noon of the day was in shadow

And the sky left its beard on the black barren earth

And the … was found in her eyes.

On a shrine of black flowers Ethusel lay dead

As he had for thirteen centuries

At his feet five crows stood and watched to his keep

And the whisper of time sighed around the hills.

Panasowna has tried fair wind for a steed

Though the sky’s in search of the star

And the serpent entwined about the stag’s head

Tried to reach out and poison her hair.

«O no, Panasowna, you will not go far

Ethusel has only one hour

And if you do not reach him before it is over

Then the other falls into the ocean.

«Panasowna took her pen and she stabbed the serpent’s eye

And he fell through the clouds to the land.

As she rode on and on full of laden stones

With horizons of life in her unsung.

«It was then that the daylight became the dark night

She recalled what the farmer had said:

When the night becomes black and no sound can be heard,

You have come to the land of the night.

«And she found the dark star hanging low in the sky

And she gathered it up in her arms

And she rode to the shrine where Ethusel lay dead

And she placed the dark star in her hair.

And the star became bright and it shone on the land

And the shrouds of darkness were gone

And Ethusel was standing before Panasowna

And the light came to bear in her hair.