"Eldest and Youngest"

[child_of_the_air]

It seems that reading a book about human evolution and the Agricultural Revolution has once again inspired me to write poetry. This time, though, it's a hymn to Hestia, which seems appropriate, since I wrote my first hymn to her almost exactly a year ago, in preparation for an Imbolc ritual (2 Febrary).

Some basic context for non-Hellenists reading this: Hestia is the goddess of the hearth, home, and family, and is also a personification of the hearth/altar fire itself: she received the first offering at any sacrificial ritual, because offerings to other gods had to pass through her fire to get to them. She is also known as first and last born, because she was the eldest of the children of Kronos and Rhea (Zeus and his siblings), and so the last to be vomited up when Kronos vomited them up.

"Eldest and Youngest"
29 Jan 2019

Great Lady, who was born both first and last,
Who welcomes all to sit around her fire,
And hosts and feeds the small and great alike:
We praise you as we light our altar flames.

You came among us when, in ancient days,
We caught high Heaven's fire in circled stones,
And tamed it just enough to cook our meals,
And guard us through the long savanna nights.

Although we wandered to the furthest shores,
Your fire burned wherever we made camp:
Our home was always there, close by your side,
Among the glaciers and the desert sands.

Today, within our walls of brick and steel,
We celebrate your birth each day anew,
As stoves and furnaces and bright-lit lamps
Still mark our homes around this settled world.