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Galway Nocturne |
Through battles he had endured that were the ultimate manifestation of hate known his time, it was the love of one that called him back like the stars beckoned the wise across the night desert to pay homage to the crownless while the foolish followed the oasisless mirage conjured by their statesmen and were led astray.
Memory of one forsaken and loyalty betrayed hailing each other like two armies
passing by in the night’s crossroads, going by opposite paths to different fronts on eve of battle. Sightless eyes to the night yet seeing their counterparts the clearer. The other army could as well have been their shadows by moonlight or reflected in the loch.But when I see myself mirrored in her eyes like a pilgrim in a castle doorway on
eve of Yuletide I will know myself again.Once I turned back on love and homeland now I do so for hate's vision unfufilled.
In aftermath of battle like a somniambulist he walked the dunes.
The roar of a lion in the desert night drawn by battle’s end lent ventriloquism to his rage in primal battle cry banishing lesser shadows whose eyes gleamed red and the greater shadow held sway.
In his heart the night itself roared. His war had just begun.
Though I refight old battles in nightmare like a phantom reinactment, in my dreams and the new dawn are
her he thought. Like a champion of light confronting one of darkness to keep the sun in the heavens
he faced memory’s nightmare and though mind and memory walk two shores now,both of landscape and dreamscape, ours are the summer nights and the words beneath the stars, though whispered
always seem sung and the only dream that matters.
Their memories and fates intertwined like a dream catcher's arachnid chords.
Like a mariner who did not know whether to look back across the wake to
diminishing shore or the horizon. Who did not know what gods to call upon
then. Spirits of depths or of heights. By whatever path he left, shadows trailed like a
dark raiment behind. Every step away ushering in the night.
The tide had not turned but he would go against it to return he vowed overlooking the sea and the moored evacuations ships, rising and falling with the tides.
Eyes agleam with dormant fires of battle. The undulant swathe of sea lulled his restless heart
to repose and reverie. A solace like embrace of night, if but for the duration of a sigh to the dark
where bards compose and men cry and learn to dream again.
And the rejuvenating memory of his muse when he felt older than the hills he strode was like a moonbeam-lit
oasis to the nomad. A tidepool of dreams. Yet so too was it an empty chalice at the partaking.Ever unfufilled
like voids between the stars in it's vastness.
By the sultry Scheharazadian eve, the shorewind like a phantasmal mantra shuddering the sea and distorting the moon’s reflection upon the waves, a wraith’s mirror undulating the surface like a ghost’s raiment
stirred by winds of another age that it walked in eternallty. Moonbeams lent their ethereal pallor to the waves like a dreamscape’s palette in a lavishment of molten silver so that
the sea seemed a pyre of silver flame
Like a mirror cast down and shattered to the moon’s vanity.
The ocean’s roar lent voice to his sigh, so deep as to partake of the night skies.
As dark things dwelt in the depths so too did an undercurrent of huntsman’s yearning express itself in a sigh,like raven wings in the dusk, wordless yet expressing all.The depth of his person like the sea itself dwelt under the surface rather than lied only the shallows betrayed.
The bard's vision seeing through darkness fallen like a lion's eye in the night.
Heart reveling with the shadows.
Whether the Celtic bards or John Lennon the lyric poet knows if one cannot take back
the past one should use words that cannot be taken back or forgotten.
So he sang then in tribute as he had of old from night to lofty tower's glow.
Gaze uplifted to the balcony and spire then to the stars in the heights
and song trailed off to become prayer. Like a lost pilgrim before a shrine.
Light caught and embraizered tresses like a parting lavishment of the sunset before the dark,
even as breath was caught in midsong
by the cascade that coronated his muse like a portrait’s gilt frame that would shame the gold of any crown.
The flicker of a solitary vigil candle enhanced by the counterspell of moonbeams so as to render
her like a beauty of the silver screen.
From the eyes of Hebridean mariner and mercenary that had found a splendour greater
than any gold delved or sea's surface inflamed with sunset.
As if he knew sun, moon, and stars as if for the first time like a Bastille prisoner liberated
from the confines of a chrysallus of darkness.
Heart and gaze lit in reply like a Bedouin caravan flame in a desert lion's eye.
The heart not be unsung for if the stars had voice they would answer in reply:
Say what you need to say now by our light while you still have the ear of
The angelic. Do not return another eve and for you will speak to an outerspace
Like a carol sung to a darkened window while the snow falls.
For what remains then is the opiate of the questing heart. A deafening eloquence
Of unspoken words separating the earthbound from the stars like the voids of
Limitless darkness more than expanse of seas had bredth.
Every song composed a battlecry against the darkness’ fall.
Like a battlecry lost on the moorwind.
Like a mariner was lost without the stars shores or beacon.
How He must feel pondered the bard, looking to the stars. An emptiness
as a haggard kind feels in a dark throneroom aloft a tower besieged by the
cries of mortals below. But we have the moment like the star’s fire between twilight and dawn
and the gods have the eternal.
And there are some moments that for their brevity bear a searing tenacity all the more
so in a legend-haunted land of myriad ghosts whose legacies cry out to one
on sleepless eves to join them in their march. To bear one’s own candle into the night
into a new dawn.
Beckoning to one who had followed his dreams like nomad and mariner
followed the guidance of the stars. As the knight-errant follows quest
and intinerant bard the stormswept road until he had strode over quest’s
threshold like the rightful heir of dream from exile.
Only new faces to searching eyes.
Only familiar stone towers and walls welcomed him back like old friends.
The retainers had not recognized the rightful heir returned.
Haggard and world weary as shadows that lingered beyond the dawn.
“Prince of the keep? Prince of the shadows. There shall you remain”.
“Know me by this?”
Talisman gleamed by moonbeams.
The old guardsman bowed low.
“Make way”.
What new songs My Lord?
Of battles for the court bard to sing.
From lands of sands and blood.
None.
Only silence that bespoke everything.
What could be said?
In “farewell to arms” and past he cast his sword to the ocean like an Arthurian knight to reclaim what was truly his quest's fufilment. Like a changeling or selkie that had shed it’s identity and façade walking between two worlds
yet ever the song of the past was heard beckoning back the shadows over the bard's road.
The lady of his heart and dreams seemed to haunt every place they had memories
Like a radiant ghost. Lady of dreams now haunting but daydreams.
Once Knight and castle
Now like ghost haunting ruins
Where was he now in the haggard apparition before them looking back with haunted eyes?
When he had defaced his countenance in an “iron mask” so he could see
others no longer behind other banners.
Like a midnight masquerade ended at bell’s tolling and music ceased he gazed then
upon her presence at the stair with expectant eyes.
The song had just begun anew.
And he closed his eyes as the bard sang by the fire and flames whispered in the hearth.
Where was the gallant knight who rode from these walls without looking back ? They had parted ways once and so she had kept his humanity in the embrace and keeping as he fared across the seas. And so like a world weary pilgrim and nomad who knew not home any longer
he craved the oasis of that restoration with the pangs of thirst in a world that knew nothing
but that thirst.
copyright 2012
Greg
Patrick |
