For Hallowe’en, For Survival

Gold cherry

By Turlough

Sat, 31 Oct 2026
  • 483 reads
13 comments
 

 

For Hallowe’en, For Survival

 

Do you remember those nights so long ago?

The gatherings we’d have for Samhain

Great feasts under Ériu’s autumn skies

Rituals rooted to the earth and her rhythm

Nature changing as seasons passed

Her pantry a plenitude of food

Where primaeval bellies grew swollen

From the fat of fertile lands

 

On the Hill of Tlachtgha we’d rejoice                       

Courting the realms that lived by our sides

Unseen in our hominine world

Without fear but mere mindful recognition

Of the fragility of our existence

Of the importance of the harvest

Of the finest of lines

Separating survival and death

Samhain’s veil of flimsy filagree

Welcomed spirits to walk amongst us, free

Their whispers our reminders

They’d perished but not gone

 

Without our Great Mother’s precious gift

There’d be no seasons, no night, no day

No fires to gather round to give our thanks

As we had in the times of the pagan chiefs

Before All Hallows’ Eve’s feast became Hallowe’en

 

Come take a good look at what we have now

Born from poisoned water, earth and air

There’s laminated food devoid of nutrition

Evoking the notion it’s tasty and grand

It wouldn’t be there on the shelves at all

Without the fossil-fuelled global mess

That washes our brains and drives a scheme

That feeds the greed of supermarket chains

That gas the pigs and gas the fruit

Keeping us days away from a famine

That much of the world already has seen

 

That finest of lines

Separating survival and death

Lingers still, though see how it’s changed

Samhain’s mutant child’s just as relevant now

As back in our ancestors’ times was the feis

But devoutly oblivious to what it means

We fly business class head-on to oblivion

On witch’s brooms stamped ‘Made in Vietnam’

 

We’ve scarier things than goblins and ghouls

And latex severed ketchup limbs

We’ve the horror films of nuclear dumps

Of leafless forests and lifeless fish

In oceans of plastic where once swam whales

And we’ve the oilfields now, as if you don’t know

And oligarchies in battle for the power of oil

And oil spilling into the rivers and seas

And burnt oil rotting our flesh and our lungs

If an oil-war bomb hasn’t killed us all first

In a perilous game of avarice we’re mere pawns

Trained to fear the witches, the queer and the strange

But not those who would burn them alive in their homes

No surprise then tonight the Bean Sídhe laments

Our wretched state with her mournful croon

 

This dark shadow of ‘Celebrate Abundance Day’

While half a hungry planet looks on

We gouge the hearts from pumpkins

And throw away the flesh

Our fancy-dressed-up children beg on doorsteps

For treats made from cows’ hide and chemicals

Or for cash

Or to ‘trick’ the unwilling

Into bombardment with flour and eggs

Or worse

And we’ve thrown away respect

 

Samhain’s always there to reminds us 

We walk this world as guardians

To eschew Hallowe’en, a man-made imposter

And the fragile convenience of

Its single-use disposable kitsch

Its Frankensteins and its Draculas

Its rubber Homer Simpson’s bloodied heads

To ask Mother Earth where it hurts

Will she tell us how we can help a wee bit?

Could we turn our hands to healing her wounds?

Or is ours the species that forgot what to do?

 

Oíche Shamhna shona daoibh!

(Happy Samhain to you all!)

 

Image:

My own photograph of my own ancient triskeles carved into my own column of stone with my own hands, using my own hammer and my own chisel.

 

 

 

Certificate U
Poem
Poetry in Commotion
Spiritual
Opinion

Comments

Submitted by Turlough on

Thank you for the cherries dear editor people.

Turlough

Submitted by GlosKat on

I think we all saw how fine those fine lines are during lockdown when people were literally fighting in the supermarket aisles.

I think it's such a shame that we seem to have almost stopped growing vegetables. People would rather spend money joining expensive gyms than getting plenty of outdoor exercise digging.  My parents' and grandparents' generations, without the disposable incomes we have, all grew vegetables in their back gardens. I've only got a small vegetable plot but I grow more than enough potatoes, green beans and tomatoes to feed me and have plenty left over to give to the neighbours.  I like to go on 'open garden' days, but find it very dispiriting to see how nearly every garden is bursting with flowers and nary a vegetable in sight.

We've turned into a giant hive, where we're totally dependent on each other (except, ironically, when we're killing each other.  But even the killing generates a lucrative arms trade which is benefitting someone).  

I can't see the clock being turned back voluntarily, but it might well get turned back in the not too distant future after the man-made apocalypse when we're all back living in caves.

Your poem is a sad and beautiful way of expressing what many of us are thinking.

 

Submitted by Turlough on

I agree with you Kat, but we’re only really scratching the surface of the problem. It depresses me to know that almost every item of food bought in an ordinary shop or supermarket these days contains potentially harmful chemicals. Imported fruit and vegetables are harvested before they’re ripe so they don’t go off in transit and then sprayed with gases to ripen them just days before they go on the shelves. 90% of pigs bred for meat are gassed because that’s the most efficient way of killing them (I wonder where they got the idea). Free-range chickens are very rarely free-range and newborn male chicks in the egg-laying industry are of no use so they’re shredded alive. Most farmed fish have been half eaten by parasites before they reach our plates. Well-known brands of chocolate can’t call themselves chocolate anymore because their cocoa content is so low. Being vegetarian used to be a comfort but the cruelty that cattle suffer in the dairy industry doesn’t bear thinking about.

I know a man who runs a market garden in Donegal. He said, ‘If a supermarket has a health food aisle, you’ve got to wonder what they’re selling in all the other aisles.’

But the other aspect of my poem is how so many old or ancient rituals have been cheapened to become vulgar consumerist shadows of what they formerly were. People spend fortunes to celebrate Hallowe’en, St Valentine’s Day, St Patrick’s Day, Christmas etc., usually without having the vaguest idea why they’re doing it. We don’t celebrate or even acknowledge any of those days because we don’t want to be associated with the greed and commercialism that goes with them. There are other, better ways of respecting the planet, the people around us and the people who went before us.  

Many thanks to you for reading, understanding and commenting. It’s greatly appreciated.

ps Our Shih Zhu is called Gaia and she’s additive free.

Turlough

Submitted by insertponceyfre... on

Very well said Turlough - the juxtaposition doesn't sit well and people don't seem to notice

 

Submitted by Turlough on

Thank you very much IPFN. I can't believe how few people there are in the world who can see what's happening to us, and I can't believe how people can put so much effort into celebrating something they don't understand. 

It's taken me two or three years to write this poem. Each October I write a few lines and then become really angry to the extent that I can't continue. I don't know what I'm going to write about next October.

I think I might start on Pancake Tuesday now.

Turlough

Submitted by Di_Hard on

Well said.
We went on a long train journey, this week; there were a lot of bulldozers, neatly stacked trees, raw earth along the way. Ready to become more tarmac and warehouses, empty offices and bleak flats. Data centres, maybe.
There is much talk of economic growth, here. Of the increasing cost of benefits payments. The answer appears to be to build data centres, the purpose of which is to use and gather data on us, more efficiently than we can ourselves. Thus making us all redundant. For this the trees are cut down, global warming speeds up, water and electricity for humans becomes scarcer.
In History o'level I struggled to understand what the benefits were, of the Industrial Revolution. One of them was meant to be that more people had jobs, making stuff cheaper so they could buy more stuff. Did this compensate for the sickness, dirt, darkness, danger and despair of the factories?
I believe economic growth is like cancerous growth. It is not compatible with life, in the long term.
We started a disease when we invented the steam engine, speeding exploitation and control, from slavery to steam, now artificial intelligence. All the rights that were won from the ruling classes after WW1 and WW2, all these are being stripped away by the new ruling classes. America has gone from FDR to Trump!
Food without nutrition, growth without Nature, life without hope.
I've started listening to the Rest is History podcast, learning that there have been some horrible societies throughout history. Lots of suffering, and health care now (if you can get it) makes quality of life better than it has ever been. But it's all about money. Some people are good at making it, some struggle to make any, some like me, society has no use for, a nützlicher Esser.
I don't know what the answers are. We seem incapable of sharing.
I have long found the Halloween displays horrifying for the waste. You've done a great job, highlighting this!

 

Submitted by Turlough on

Every word of what you’ve said is true Di. There was always the unfairness of the feudal system but in the name of progress the industrial revolution brought greed and the inevitable widespread suffering, particularly poverty and slavery, that accompanies capitalism. There’s only so much to go round so for some people to become incredibly wealthy others must become incredibly poor. I find it hard to believe that with all the knowledge and education we have at our fingertips we cannot see that since the eighteenth century, things have been getting progressively worse to such an extent that we have now reached a point where global economics are totally out of control. In three hundred years did nobody think about putting the brakes on?

I wonder if the day will eventually dawn when artificial intelligence has such a grip on us that absolutely nobody has a job? The machines will rule the world and the only people who will not be starving will be the people who own the machines. But wars might mean that we never reach that point… every mushroom cloud has a silver lining!

It’s uplifting to know there are still people who recognise the problems, so I’m grateful to you for your comments. Thank you very much indeed.

Turlough

Submitted by Di_Hard on

Yes. It's like with the trawling and bottom scraping they are doing in the sea. They know that it is going to eliminate fish as it takes the young ones, and removes all habitat. Once there were so many fish in the Clyde one man could fill his boat, just by lowering a net into the water. Fishing got more efficient, fish got more extinct

 

Submitted by Turlough on

The sea beds must be a nightmare to look at Di.

I was reading recently that no matter where in the world the fish that goes into fish fingers is caught, It’s filleted, frozen and then taken to a factory in China to be processed into the fingers’ soft centre before being sent back to the fish finger factory wherever that may be.

I’ve never trusted that Captain Birdseye with all those kids on his ship.

Turlough

Submitted by drew_gummerson on

Plenty of really good Halloween pieces on the site today but this is my Pick of the Day.

Congratu-spooky-alations!

 

Submitted by Turlough on

That's great news Drew. Thank you very much.

I hope you have a grand time tonight with your rituals rooted to the earth and her rhythm.

Turlough

Submitted by celticman on

Happy Samhain or survival to you too. 

 

Submitted by Turlough on

I survived, thank you. And I hope you did too.

Turlough