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Mon 15 Mar, 2004 02:26 am
This is the first draft of an idea that came to me in a library toilet (glamourous!) I don't know what to think of it.
On long pale grasslands, which each air's change swept?-
Grasslands that glanced upon far, fettered worlds?-
Gods showed themselves: the ears of prayer
For dissipated soldiers beyond care
But still pleading their life,
Or likewise for
Girls fast becoming spinsters, lost from love,
Who begged for their necessities. Above:
The home of furied madmen, carrying
Old lines of feeling, or deep trains of blood:
The listeners to all without a hope.
But in their shadows sighed a wistful girl
Whom they dubbed Vigilia: her one care
Was just to sit for passing days, and stare
At loves below her. She
Was quite a sight:
Her hair seemed doused in thirty thousand flames;
Her mind flaked marble souls proficiently;
But she had nothing she could do.
She just protected what she did not know.
And what you do not know is like a bee
That circles ?'round your head until you catch it.
And this was what she
Felt. No secret, or no longing, can subside
And settle at its owner's anxious worry.
?'What is this love?' she cried, with majesty,
Until it overcame her. It was in
The middle of the Sineal Wars, that she
Went to her father?-old, bold Marceus.
He seemed a moving statue, his gloomed eyes
Reflecting nothing human back to see.
?'What do you want?' he barked with apathy,
?'Why must you see me yet again?' and she
Pushed back her hair to where the rain once fell,
And promptly started. ?'I have come to see,
Dear father, if you'd grant a wish for me.'
?'A wish?', he barked, 'a wish? How covetous
That you could want more than the whole earth laid
Purple and serving at your ageing feet!'
?'You fail to understand?-please try to see
That with all bounties right here facing me,
I do not have what they all have below.'
Both Gods stood tall. Then Marceus bellowed
?'Why should you want what lies below, my dear,
When you could sup from all the richness here?
The things they seem to use and break below
Were for them just created. Even so,
I want no foolish pining any more:
Base what you want ?'round what you have by now.
But wise words never stopped old Romeos.
Vigilia retreated, thanked him glad
But thought?-?'what is life, if without a dream?
Oh, it is poor! Without one, things stand still,
And what we have is what we've always had.
What good is this? What basis for regret.
I shall ignore him, be it for my death.'
And so, this lonely Vigilia left
Those feral grasslands. Aiming for below,
She sent herself down like a crazed arrow
Shot by a fool, or God. Then she saw
What her grand heart had coveted before?-
Strong love. A blaze that takes all in
Whatever building it, by chance, consumes,
That breathes them into smoke. She surely thought
That what she did was wise, at this said hour.
But love escaped the man at whom she gazed.
If love's a building-fire, then it's clear
That he fled out alive, whilst in the blaze
The Goddess found herself. Down on the Earth
She could not just command people to do
Exactly what she told them to.
She was no coward, though; still she remained
As brave as any god that brazed the land?-
And thought that she could win him, if she could
Just follow him, this man called Anthony.
And so, she rode on horses through dank pits,
She rode on horses over town-watch crests,
All just to see?-to love?-this Anthony.
He was drafted to war. I shall not bore
You with all the details, all the spills
Of countrymen on Sinya's ancient shores.
All right, I will.
Two brothers, born below night stars, arose
To see their father dead before his time.
Murdered, they thought. He left, before he died,
A list of who should take what, by his blood.
Each brother thought the other's lot was good?-
Better than his?- and so they grew to war.
Sinya collapsed; these plump leaches tore
Fathers from children, friends from friends,
Without discerning why they went away
From all they had, for nothing of their gain.
They drafted Anthony to Festys' side,
And he was locked away in dour war.
What more could Vigilia do, except
Wait ?'til Anthony left the killing fields,
When he could do no more? And so, she stood?-
She passed each day more forlorn than before
Until she thought: ?'what if I see no more
This love, this man in soldiers' hands?'
Accepting that providence is a joke
Played by old devils?-an old comedy
That jolted with each day?- she cloaked herself,
And strode amongst men, and proclaimed with cheer
That she would fight until Festys had won.
Nothing was bleaker than the lines, the spears,
But optimism rode inside her skull.
Five days passed by. Nights slithered into soil.
And Anthony was dead. And so began
A melancholy fit for any King,
A song so sour, that if birds should sing
Its acid notes, they would fall from the sky.
Vigilia pleaded for help. She cried,
?'Oh, make it stop! If you have hearts or souls
Excuse my yen, and lift me up again.
My heart has withered in this desert place
But I could just pretend to care no more
Of everything that passes by. O, help.'
And Marceus looked down upon his daughter
A brief streak in a black, enormous line,
And did no more than turn his back to her.
And she died: her death warrants no account.
The war passed; gushed in streams of better things,
And where had been deserted was again
Silent. And there, Vigilia remained
?'Though her cadaver waxed, moon-like, away.
But what remained to see was a red line
Where that brief Goddess once had stood, and drowned.
For ninety years, no rain rusted that point.
This time she looked up, rather than gazed down.
Drom,
Wow!
Some of your allusions I did not understand, but the message was beautifully clear, more's the pity.
Thanks, Letty; that's the first positive feedback that I have received for this poem; I am really glad that you liked it. The other person whom I showed it to said that the name Vigilia reminded her of thrush cream, which makes the line 'O, make it stop! If you have hearts or souls' sound ludicrous. It doesn't allude to 'real' mythology, which might be a little weird, making it all up myself, but I thought that I should try to tell the idea.
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