The Faery Reel

Neil Gaiman

If I were young as once I was, and dreams and death more distant then,

I wouldn’t split my soul in two, and keep half in the world of men,

So half of me would stay at home, and strive for Fäerie in vain,

While all the while my soul would stroll up narrow path, down crooked lane,

And there would meet a fairy lass and smile and bow with kisses three,

She’d pluck wild eagles from the air and nail me to a lightning tree

And if my heart would run from her or flee from her, be gone from her,

She’d wrap it in a nest of stars and then she’d take it on with her

Until one day she’d tire of it, all bored with it and done with it

She’d leave it by a burning brook, and off brown boys would run with it.

They’d take it and have fun with it and stretch it long and cruel and thin,

They’d slice it into four and then they’d string with it a violin.

And every day and every night they played upon my heart a song

So plaintive and so wild and strange that all who heard it danced along

And sang and whirled and sank and trod and skipped and slipped and reeled

and rolled

Until, with eyes as bright as coals, they’d crumble into wheels of gold. . . .

But I am young no longer now, for sixty years my heart’s been gone

To play its dreadful music there, beyond the valley of the sun.

I watch with envious eyes and mind, the single-souled, who dare not feel

The wind that blows beyond the moon, who do not hear the Faery Reel.

If you don’t hear the Faery Reel, they will not pause to steal your breath.

When I was young I was a fool. So wrap me up in dreams and death.

Neil Gaimanis a transplanted Briton currently living in the American Midwest. He is the author of the award-winning Sandmanseries of graphic novels, and of the novels Neverwhereand American Gods. American Godswon the Hugo, the Bram Stoker, the SFX, and the Locus Awards. His most recent novel, intended for children of all ages, Coraline, won the Bram Stoker Award in the Work for Young Readers category, and was a Finalist for the World Fantasy Award. Gaiman’s collaborations with artist Dave McKean include Mr. Punch, the children’s books The Day I Swapped my Dad for 2 Goldfishand The Wolves in the Walls, and their new film Mirror-Mask.

In addition, Gaiman is a talented poet and short story writer whose work has been published in a number of the Datlow/Windling adult fairy tale anthologies, in The Green Manand A Wolf at the Door, and in several editions of The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. His short work has been collected in Angels and Visitationsand Smoke and Mirrors.

His Web site is www.neilgaiman.com.

Author’s Note

Most of the poems I’ve written are happy to sit on the page and be looked at. This one was written with the idea of a faery reel in mind, the beats of a dance that would make your feet twitch and set its measure in the back of your head, and so it was written to be read out loud. You could make up a tune for it, if you like. Proper fairy tunes can fill your mind and your feet with their tune and their rhythm so there’s no room left to think of anything else and you dance and move to the beat of the song until you collapse, exhausted, and never move again. Don’t set it to one of those tunes.