An ode to loss and change from a rational mind coming to terms with the fleeting nature of history.
Figure
1 - The North Wind goes over
the sea.
[1]
Fixed grey faces
gaze silently through their glaze, evoking memories of a time gone by and of lives
that were,
But where is
yesterday? When was tomorrow? An eternity of fleeting moments lost to the seething
surf,
Lives beyond
capture by any tree-lined garden of descent, graven on some far-distant tablet beyond
the sight of man, save the muse of Parmenides,
For lifeless and
textureless is the world beyond the duir,
daubed in questionable hue from the palette of want.
Lain waste,
their legacies of stone; the First Ones, long passed into shadow as though but
a dream, bequeathing debt immortal,
Fading,
failing, falling into darkness, unto dissolution, decay and dust, fettered by
the illimitable dice,
Events and
stories forsaken by the relentless arrow to lie fallow in their starless stasis
betwixt the pages of every passing instant,
Celestial
progenies cast adrift and abandoned by nature’s unmindful Doxa, unworthy of all remembrance.
From mankind, whose
words be louder than its thoughts, writ in blackest quill, the dogma that
serves the meek through the mighty,
While sages patiently
strive to learn the magical music by which all things dance, but finding only purest
melody and no tempo,
A world of
adamantine illusion, wishfully tamed and told through the balancing runes,
A lost chord
stripped of all harmony, and the myste
with two faces poised in suspended masquerade.
So great the
gift of time — the giver of Life, the æon
of being, the conjurer of cause, and yet the arrow by which we fall,
Weep not for
the past, nor for the lost moments, parting kisses, or stolen memories,
The price we
pay for life is change — is wax and
wane — is loss and gain, but the thief of days wields an arrow fashioned and
shaped by conscious minds,
Taking the
coin from our mouths, the thief knowingly smiles back with our own faces.
To the end of
days, when all our suns have set on the crimson tide of life's blood,
When all our
whispers have fallen silent on the Bible-black firmament, and their echoes have
all flown their paper prisons and coulomb cages,
From the last
glimmers of life, dream-dashed and robbed of love and hope, still clinging to
its rock,
One final
desperate cry will be heard afore The Great Wave:
...There can
be no rhyme for there was no reason!
Figure
2 - Just as they bent down to take the rose a big dense snowdrift came and carried them away.
[2]
Copyright © Tony Proctor
#Poetry #Science #Time
Honorable Mention in the
International Society of Family History Writers and Editors (ISFHWE) competition of 2017:
Winners.
[1] "The North Wind goes over the sea", illustration, East
of the Sun and West of the Moon, Kay Rasmus Nielsen (1886–1957),
illustrator (1914); attribution: [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
[2] "Just as they bent down to take the rose a big dense snowdrift came and carried them away", illustration, East
of the Sun and West of the Moon, Kay Rasmus Nielsen (1886–1957),
illustrator (1914); attribution: [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
