In the Halcyon Skies

What refulgence is unfurled
from beyond the walls of night
to shine upon the shadow-world
with a pure and hallowed light?

Like the dawn upon the plain,
my Aurvandil glimmers fair,
an elixer to my burdened brain,
easing every weighted care;

softening every jagged edge,
uplifting wan and weary eyes;
the prelude of an endless pledge,
radiant in the halcyon skies.

Teddy bears nailed to a tree

The day was hot and moist, like a dog's breath.
The smoke clung close to the ground,
blue and pungent, under a dream of swinging leaves.
The banshee voices echoed down the clapboard corridor,
and deep into the ocean of August sky.

The day is cold and brittle, like broken glass.
The traffic stirs the weathered plush.
The stitched faces are ever smiling but never happy,
amid the faded polyester flowers
and colored ribbons fluttering there.

Wayfarer

The withered hand of winter offers
coins of coldness for the coffers;
beneath the howling wolfish sky,
comes a striding stranger, I.
The winds bestir the dying leaves,
the crows disperse, the hedgerow heaves,
the air is filled with discontent,
changeful, fretting, spectre-sent.
Travailing against the ether-weight,
I stride along, and contemplate,
passing dormant fountain-heads,
and mirthless shriveled flowerbeds,
grimly noting their demise
with sympathetic weary eyes;
but beyond these gardens, oh!
many leagues are left to go,
and wolves are howling in the sky,
as the stranger passes by.

Like the hills of heaven, she lay

Like the hills of heaven, she lay
serene and splendid in the night,
forgetful of the golden day
and dreaming in the silver light.

Dreaming of the loss of love,
of flowers blooming on the sea
and gulls descending from above
who bore them off quite merrily.

Shadows shifted on the wall,
the shy moon fled the brazen sun;
she heard the robin sweetly call,
her wedding day had now begun.

A feather now my page will keep

The Realms of South America can wait;
I need a moment to rest my eyes;
to recline my head and contemplate,
with listless limbs and weary sighs;
       while birches shiver out in the chill
       and scrape across my windowsill;
and, like so many moths, the snow
beats with softness on the glass
amid a dull and spectral glow
arising from the frosted grass.
      The candle flickers beside my bed;
      the pillow calls my nodding head;
the Andes, lofty in the light
shining broad in warmer climes,
must now await another night:
the yonder church bell rang three times!
      A feather now my page will keep
      as I succumb at last to sleep.

Laraleä

[From: 'The Last Journal of Gwyllyn']

 

She is gone away from me

with the sun beyond the sea;

what she was she will not be.

 

'Still she haunts me, phantomwise,'

beneath these gloaming winter skies,
a light and solace to my eyes.

The silver mirth of star and moon
brings forth dreams of light in June
upon a golden afternoon.

Like fair Venus in the west,
there she sits where all is best
and bids me come and take my rest.

Under young and tender leaves,
she, as wind with music heaves,
sings of joy and never grieves.

In skiff past shrouded riverside,
through the night I gently glide
toward the roaring ocean-tide

where waves dance upon the shore,
and stars glimmer like silver ore,
but I will leave these evermore.

For with her I soon will be
with the sun beyond the sea;
what I was I will not be.

Pandora's Inheritance

In a strange way the light illumines
the whites of her eyes, the smiles
and happy balloons, floating away
into an overexposed collodion sky.
High clouds are knife-spread too thin
across the crimson-crusted morning.
The backyard is a frowning garden,
all monochrome and mildewed;
the birdbath brims with maple leaves
and black frozen water; a drunken
wheelbarrow slumbers and rots
amid shadows and unmown grass;
but dawn is fresh upon the hard mud
and fragments of plastic playthings,
little smiling girls and pink-glitter horses
with broken legs; the air is clean and cold,
full of serene indifference and the scent
of chimney smoke; a withered shrine
of firewood and cinder blocks is forgotten
in the shade of a dying brown fir;
the house is locked and empty; she breathes
on her fingers, and pines for her gloves;
an icy tear falls from the aluminum awning,
and shatters upon the crumpled earth.