I can remember losing a lot of memories in cloudy water
like a milky stare, like a child's gift swept angrily away
past immeasurably wounded eyes, the first landmark of adulthood
and confusion in the face of stupid cruelty.
I can see myself going blind with the sunset;
I cannot feel the touchstones I once held in hand:
light, rest, reason and faith.
All fades, yet I remember you, my gilded Lily.
I am encompassed by the night, these grassy rustlings, but you have a bright ghost.
Having lost even the deathly sense of the drowning glass, the looking glass,
the glass darkly swimming between blue hands,
your lingering warmth is all of mine.
God took you from me.
I would have been as jealous of my love.
Elemental, personal, universal. I'm not sure, but I think that in one sense, this piece is about growing up and losing that childish view of life that made believing in angels so easy. The language is rich with vivid detail, but with a pensive beauty. Well done sir. Well done.
ReplyDeleteThe pain of this piece is just dripping off of every stanza. The imagery gives the whole poem a feel of night, and slow, dark, ethereal scenes. I can think of an abstract painting of this, as well as the music that would go with it.
ReplyDeleteWhen you say "I would have been as jealous of my love." Do you mean you were jealous when God took your gilded Lily, and you would have been just as jealous if he had taken your love? As in your capacity to love and be loved etc.
I love how something so mournful, with a new picture and metaphor of the your pain in every stanza can still come across so peaceful.
"I can remember losing"
"I can see myself going blind"
"All fades, yet I remember you"
Flashes of experience, time, learning, all made much easier to sympathize with because it's not angry or violent. Just a sad story whose content speaks for itself.