Soon, the Departure
Mar. 28th, 2012 11:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
figureofdismayAnother old poem rescued from the Depths and given a going over. I wrote it longer ago than I had realized, it needed some work, but it's actually still one of my favourites.
Soon, the Departure to Avalon –
This, the very substance of this,
the magnitude of what they will tear apart
And pull down
Or draw together
For the sake of each other.
Like the brush of a hand across the water
and the lifetime of the fading ripples,
so brief, so short,
scarcely a breath.
And you, clawing at the mortal barrier,
desperate, groping fingers
clinging to each moment that passes
And clutching them to your chest –
yet they seep and seep,
what good are hands for holding air?
Moments are sand or water
or coins that fall through your awkward grasp,
currency to buy respite, increments of comfort
when the cost of your elevation is so dear.
You are pinned by the size of the universe,
its dreadful infinity, its unyielding vastness,
with such a distance before you –
such a distance,
such an unmerciful distance –
you think of what must be surmounted
and curse this linear existence,
that we must experience each mile
and not come to its end
while we still have light by which to see.
Leaving all the wreck and ruin behind,
so far behind,
you see yourself a Prophet,
eyes half-brimming with starlight,
a beacon on this forward motion
a quest brought on by lunacy –
by necessity.
And when all your clothes wear thin,
thread from fraying thread
and you stagger and stumble under,
you will float out into the mists,
into the embrace of time and space
and time.
But before the mists there is this —
Cannot you feel it?
Cannot you guess at it?
This feeling, this constancy,
this magnetic field of heat and hope
and brining regrets.
Unasked for and unwished for,
It is ungraceful and ungainly love
but undeniably present
and so much more human
tangible
solid
than this backdrop of dreams and melancholy.
All this death has made you selfish,
you feel so hollow and emptied out
a husk of a woman, a shell
and you will do anything to feel full again —
and warm,
to chase away the flood of memory that presses against the cracks
and threatens to capsize you in frothing foam,
anything to fight the urge to think in terms of
One last
One last
One last.
You are reveling in the flesh of this moment,
the flesh of this fruit,
the flesh of this love
and the skin of this moment is the skin of the universe,
the horizon line,
the mortal edge of sight,
and what is beyond is just –
Beyond.
Soon, the Departure to Avalon –
This, the very substance of this,
the magnitude of what they will tear apart
And pull down
Or draw together
For the sake of each other.
Like the brush of a hand across the water
and the lifetime of the fading ripples,
so brief, so short,
scarcely a breath.
And you, clawing at the mortal barrier,
desperate, groping fingers
clinging to each moment that passes
And clutching them to your chest –
yet they seep and seep,
what good are hands for holding air?
Moments are sand or water
or coins that fall through your awkward grasp,
currency to buy respite, increments of comfort
when the cost of your elevation is so dear.
You are pinned by the size of the universe,
its dreadful infinity, its unyielding vastness,
with such a distance before you –
such a distance,
such an unmerciful distance –
you think of what must be surmounted
and curse this linear existence,
that we must experience each mile
and not come to its end
while we still have light by which to see.
Leaving all the wreck and ruin behind,
so far behind,
you see yourself a Prophet,
eyes half-brimming with starlight,
a beacon on this forward motion
a quest brought on by lunacy –
by necessity.
And when all your clothes wear thin,
thread from fraying thread
and you stagger and stumble under,
you will float out into the mists,
into the embrace of time and space
and time.
But before the mists there is this —
Cannot you feel it?
Cannot you guess at it?
This feeling, this constancy,
this magnetic field of heat and hope
and brining regrets.
Unasked for and unwished for,
It is ungraceful and ungainly love
but undeniably present
and so much more human
tangible
solid
than this backdrop of dreams and melancholy.
All this death has made you selfish,
you feel so hollow and emptied out
a husk of a woman, a shell
and you will do anything to feel full again —
and warm,
to chase away the flood of memory that presses against the cracks
and threatens to capsize you in frothing foam,
anything to fight the urge to think in terms of
One last
One last
One last.
You are reveling in the flesh of this moment,
the flesh of this fruit,
the flesh of this love
and the skin of this moment is the skin of the universe,
the horizon line,
the mortal edge of sight,
and what is beyond is just –
Beyond.
