Chasm & Mirrormere
Dec. 18th, 2009 10:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
written_leavesFallen, fallen...
Chasm is a brief mourning piece after the loss of Gandalf, so suddenly taken from them, and is essentially Frodo's point of view but could apply to Aragorn as well. With it is Mirrormere, a little different from my usual writing in that it dives more deeply into symbolism and philosophical thinking - part of me likes it and part of me thinks it needs work because I was 'trying too hard'. I think I was reading things like Thanatopsis at this time and it shows.
Chasm
Fallen, fallen...
My father and my friend
Taken by the shadow
With hardly a word
You fell.
Silence and
Emptiness are left
Where once I touched your hand,
Felt your gentle presence by my side,
Heard your voice of assurance
In the midst of my fears.
Fallen, fallen...
My comfort and my guide.
Like a child terrified
By the night's darkness
I cry out
For a father
Who never comes.
The others weep; I am alone.
How can I go on? Gandalf, what
Is to become of me, without you?
I cannot see for my tears.
Only
What life I can give seeking
The goal you set before me
Remains as my purpose.
Only
What time I have,
What choices I can yet make
Remain in memorial to you.
-
Mirrormere
Kindled in fire everlasting
In these depths of sapphire blue:
The crown of an eternal King
With light of stars imbued.
Beyond the edge of time, Mirrormere -
In pooled glimpse of eternity:
The delicate temporal
Fades from our world,
And the immutable finds clarity.
Ethereal as mist that draws away,
Our tattered memory fades
Even while we live; turns and goes.
What hope is there in legends told?
Paper crumbles, words lose their stay,
Rain slowly softens graven stone.
Time smooths all sorrows and joys away
Tracing an endless line of thronging
Lives that love, or hate or cry;
As unfulfilled they fail and die
In indifference or in longing.
Silence and stillness.
Dreamers who dream away their days
And those who exult in strivings:
Sand sifts into their forgotten graves.
To Youth from the hands of the dying
Meanings in heirlooms are quickly lost.
Heirlooms lie safe in their waiting grasp -
But the memories and tales,
And hidden secrets frail
Go unuttered by choice or happenstance.
As breath fades in grey winter’s dawn
Lives fade in Eternity, surely drawn.
Even the mighty among us:
Mere wind that rattles the branches in passing.
Our path is filled with hidden bendings
As we wander our years and ages,
Our trail of forgotten treasures off-casting.
For life is brief and bones are pale.
Shadows rise and shadows fail -
As we await the final ending.
Fair Kheled-zâram.
Water of shrouded mystery and depth
Bearing a promise of lasting peace.
Where is the King whose diadem stars kept
Hidden midst your reflections deep?
The Mirrormere waits with patient hand
To receive that glory when it comes,
Be it of this world or afar,
Creation’s dawn or morning star,
As shafts of light twixt moon and sun.
Unreflected by twilight’s water:
We the Hopers, we the Watchers.
Our faces unnoticed midst creation -
Stones raised, cast down, fallen to dust.
Unseen stones on an eternal foundation;
While foundation remains, continue we must.
Held close to the breast it is bittersweet;
Blind to the longer tale we are of,
Fated to hold the fleeting.
We gaze into the Mirrormere…
Silken waters cold and still;
Secrets held yet plainly seen.
Liquid mirror of promises,
And prophecies crystalline.
Chasm is a brief mourning piece after the loss of Gandalf, so suddenly taken from them, and is essentially Frodo's point of view but could apply to Aragorn as well. With it is Mirrormere, a little different from my usual writing in that it dives more deeply into symbolism and philosophical thinking - part of me likes it and part of me thinks it needs work because I was 'trying too hard'. I think I was reading things like Thanatopsis at this time and it shows.
Chasm
Fallen, fallen...
My father and my friend
Taken by the shadow
With hardly a word
You fell.
Silence and
Emptiness are left
Where once I touched your hand,
Felt your gentle presence by my side,
Heard your voice of assurance
In the midst of my fears.
Fallen, fallen...
My comfort and my guide.
Like a child terrified
By the night's darkness
I cry out
For a father
Who never comes.
The others weep; I am alone.
How can I go on? Gandalf, what
Is to become of me, without you?
I cannot see for my tears.
Only
What life I can give seeking
The goal you set before me
Remains as my purpose.
Only
What time I have,
What choices I can yet make
Remain in memorial to you.
-
Mirrormere
Kindled in fire everlasting
In these depths of sapphire blue:
The crown of an eternal King
With light of stars imbued.
Beyond the edge of time, Mirrormere -
In pooled glimpse of eternity:
The delicate temporal
Fades from our world,
And the immutable finds clarity.
Ethereal as mist that draws away,
Our tattered memory fades
Even while we live; turns and goes.
What hope is there in legends told?
Paper crumbles, words lose their stay,
Rain slowly softens graven stone.
Time smooths all sorrows and joys away
Tracing an endless line of thronging
Lives that love, or hate or cry;
As unfulfilled they fail and die
In indifference or in longing.
Silence and stillness.
Dreamers who dream away their days
And those who exult in strivings:
Sand sifts into their forgotten graves.
To Youth from the hands of the dying
Meanings in heirlooms are quickly lost.
Heirlooms lie safe in their waiting grasp -
But the memories and tales,
And hidden secrets frail
Go unuttered by choice or happenstance.
As breath fades in grey winter’s dawn
Lives fade in Eternity, surely drawn.
Even the mighty among us:
Mere wind that rattles the branches in passing.
Our path is filled with hidden bendings
As we wander our years and ages,
Our trail of forgotten treasures off-casting.
For life is brief and bones are pale.
Shadows rise and shadows fail -
As we await the final ending.
Fair Kheled-zâram.
Water of shrouded mystery and depth
Bearing a promise of lasting peace.
Where is the King whose diadem stars kept
Hidden midst your reflections deep?
The Mirrormere waits with patient hand
To receive that glory when it comes,
Be it of this world or afar,
Creation’s dawn or morning star,
As shafts of light twixt moon and sun.
Unreflected by twilight’s water:
We the Hopers, we the Watchers.
Our faces unnoticed midst creation -
Stones raised, cast down, fallen to dust.
Unseen stones on an eternal foundation;
While foundation remains, continue we must.
Held close to the breast it is bittersweet;
Blind to the longer tale we are of,
Fated to hold the fleeting.
We gaze into the Mirrormere…
Silken waters cold and still;
Secrets held yet plainly seen.
Liquid mirror of promises,
And prophecies crystalline.