Lay for the Day 3rd November

In the ancient Roman world, today was the culmination of the festival of Isis, which began on 28th October. Though in Juno, the Queen of Heaven, the Romans had an analogous deity of their own, still Isis, the great goddess of Egypt, was widely honoured and had a temple in Rome.

In the elaborate mythology that Rome inherited from Greece, Juno (the Greek Hera) was a jealous queen, plagued by the capricious desires of her divine consort Jupiter (the Greek Zeus). Whereas Isis, with her long, devoted quest to collect and resurrect the dismembered body of Osiris, her husband-brother, and with her gifts of fertility and of rebirth, retained the primitive qualities of Great Mother and Heavenly Bride, faithful and fruitful.

She’s My Hero

She’s my hero,
See where she goes,
You and me know
She’s my hero.
She’s my hero.

Batman and Robin,
They come to her sobbin’.
Marlowe and Sam Spade,
When they needed aid,
She stepped from the shade.

The night she took the boys on,
Their whisky spiked with poison,
She drank them all down off the bar.
She can tame the serpent
And make the beast her servant,
She’s something more than a star.

She’s my hero,
See where she goes,
You and me know
She’s my hero.
She’s my hero.

Judge Dredd and Tarzan
And who was that masked man?
Yes the Lone Ranger,
They call her in danger.
She’s their good angel.

In the furnace of the desert
She’ll shade you with her feathers
And lead you in a pleasanter place.
Under cover of a willow
With her heart for your pillow
And the sky is her beautiful face.

She’s my hero,
See where she goes,
You and me know
She’s my hero.
She’s my hero.

In the valley of the shadow
When the moon is getting madder,
Someone kicked the ladder away.
She’ll get you to the river
And heal the pain you give her
And break your chains of silver today.

Seen her been put down
And look, she’s still standing
In bare feet and nightgown
Upon the top landing
Where she beat the dragon.

She’s my hero,
See where she goes,
You and me know
She’s my hero.
She’s my hero.
She’s my hero.

Words and music by The Children

 

The Lay Reader: an archive of the poetic calendar