Old English
From carles (“peasant’s”) + wǣn (“wagon”).
Pronunciation
/ˈkarlez wæːn/
Noun
carles wǣn m
the Big Dipper; the Great Bear, Ursa Major
Carles wæn ne gæþ næfre adune under ðyssere eorþan, swa swa oðre tunglan doþ: Carles Wain never goes under the earth as other constellations do.
(De Natura Rerum [De Rerum Natura] by Lucretius)
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They have more stars here,
The dark and light are no longer ubiquitous,
my children cry.
Carles Wǣn, like their hearts, is constant.
Clouds differ, or dissemble.
Moon may diffuse.
Similarities to tenacious life,
undying in torpid rifts,
remind us of this.
The passage of celestial forgetting.
Reaching out with tendrils
of darkest memory.
Like all the morbid declensions
of human understanding
of truth and right,
Uplifted in one stark vision.
A star’s right.
The gift of some Eden.
Carles Wǣn, drawing us up.
So much of this good place
wants to lift us.
Humankind, or unkind,
gives little truck
to such gifts.
Roiling instead in the
pathetic oblivion of
selfish conceit.
Ah me,
lift me up Carles Wǣn,
hold me to a higher place.
Remind me how little I matter.
How much I matter.
Blend us, splendid stars!
Are you God’s eyes?
We are foolish small things.
Lost in ourselves.
But in the moment,
‘pon my back, in the grass,
We are everything.
~DJR
sauviloquy 