Jumping the train of your thoughts

Jumping the train of your thoughts,
like a hobo, bedraggled and weary,
adrift upon rattling wheel-dreams,
sprawled in a boxcar under twilight,
with dying moths in the sawdust,
with yeast rolls and apple cores,
Indian Head pennies and peach snuff.
The trees are sifted by September;
a silo eclipses the swelling moon.
Old eyes open in the half-light
and watch as unfamiliar sceneries
pass by like clean mountain streams
after the first great thawing of spring.

How sudden sunlight shakes

Of course she does not realize
how sudden sunlight shakes,
like golden veins of lightning,
through antiquated stonework,
through battle-wearied walls,
at a smile of clear-eyed joy,
striking with acute enchantment - 
a ruin of bliss! in gladness straying
over silver-beaded grasses
into hushed and hidden gardens
ablaze with blooming florettes,
the fairest of lanterns shining
in all the encircling world!

To Anna

[from: Joy Beneath the Battered Moon: The Complete Writings of Gwyllyn]

 

I wish I could make this world as full of radiant light

as beautiful and as pure, as happy and as bright

as it now seems to you in your childish sight
untouched by the tainted shadows of night.

She sleeps under a Rackham tree

Her eyes are tired, they close unbidden,
the moon by tattered rags is hidden;
a breath of cold air moves the leaves,
a lonely night-dove gently grieves.

The Rackham tree is reaching down
with crooked arms and troubled frown
as if to guard the sleeping child
from the world now dark and wild.

Broadway

Let silence smooth away
the fault-lines and furrows,
the riven hillocks between
curious strangers in the sun,
stepping on paper trash and
shouldering the hot wind. We
emerge with empty clockwork
faces, hiding trembling little
souls, flames leaping up from
candlewick lives, past crumbling
art nouveau cornices into the
great blue wilderness of heaven.

Late in the Day

Broad grasses like holy emeralds shine
and breezes bestir the poplar and pine,
while clouds with painterly skill are arrayed
across a canvas of shimmering jade.

What charms now bid my mind to turn
and gently coax my heart to burn?

Skeleton leaves and cypress seeds,
putrid flowers and beautiful weeds,
robins and sparrows, leaping squirrels,
sandstone fossils of angels and girls.

What dreams now lull my soul to rest
from dying days and weary quest?

The birds and trees are falling asleep,
the squirrels no longer climb and leap.
The bright jade sky now turns to grey
and in shadows the emeralds fade away.

200th posted piece: From whence come now

From whence come now these fragrant winds
bestirring hope? Who gently sends
such breathings full of whispered words
upon which dance the joyous birds?
What phlox and wildwood roses fair
with thyme and trillium scent the air
of sylvan hallways green and cool?
What shaking leaves and shining pool
charm these woodlands all the day
and countless troubled thoughts allay?

The ravens of my thoughts

The ravens of my thoughts
come to your waters to drink,
under dream-mists of moonlight,
settling darkly on the shore.

Recalling fairest meadows
on watercolor mornings,
breaths full of wild thyme
and new-blooming heather.

Afternoons of leisure,
the running freely about,
the clear light and music
of bright laughing voices.

The peace of purple twilight,
the drowsy lull of nature,
the silver stars enkindled
in your ocean-jewel eyes.

With a long thirsting slaked,
the ravens, on shining wings,
like stray shadows on the wind
to the sleeping woods return.

Imperatrix Ignis

Clare's wakeful dreamings flew up like flames
out on the raging sun-meads of Empyrean.
Worlds leapt from the gladsome furnace of her thought,
colliding and expanding in splendor as they arose.
The ascendancy eclipsed even the expanse of heaven
as the revelation of her designs became fearsome and fair.
The builded realms were arrayed as exquisite abodes
wherein dwelt many throngs of flaming personages,
like unto angels in shining attire, immersed in living light:
fiery choirs, radiant and mirthful in their ministrations,
uplifting choruses to She who had deigned to bring them
from Her Regal Mind into the bright fire-spheres of Life.
At the core of the edifice pulsed an immense Fire-Heart,
from which surged the lava-blood of Life Essence.
She beheld the lofty resplendence, and was well-pleased.
But the gravity of her triumph brought about utter defeat:
The blazing structure, under its own beautiful weight, collapsed
and oh! how the interlaced sinews of spectacular fire,
the joyful assemblies, and the entire glorious metropolis,
streamed down from the sky as burning embers and ash,
yea! as a very Anti-Phoenix, into the darkness of Oblivion.

Ruined Estate

When the bricks of these buildings were young,
when the songs of the years were yet unsung,
when wormwood waves lapped not these shores,
and the light danced glad through open doors;
it was then that fair Eden was found in your eyes,
with the music and fragrance of bright summer skies,
when apples and apricots swelled in the trees
and gardens were merry with the droning of bees;
but those windows are shuttered, the bricks are decayed,
the seas are now bitter, and summer delayed,
all the bees have departed, the gardens are bare,
and shadows and shriveled fruit only are there.

Agnes Abroad

It was a moon-scorched midnight;
the stars were thoroughly dissolved.
Agnes arose from where she had lain too long.
The deep grass remembered her sleeping frame
as she rubbed bright eyes with fragile fingers.
The maples danced in the warm wind like marionettes,
moving many hands to their own native rhythms.
Songs from wild and unseen mouths
crowded upon the outer edge of silence.
A startled dove took sudden flight
and fled towards the shadowed hill-slopes.
Agnes breathed, and gazed into the black north.
She would fain be beyond those hills
before the first kindling of dawn.
And so, with nightgown fluttering like white fire,
and with bare and furtive feet, she pressed on.

Passing through Perkins

These mountains are not lovely, they
are clothed in tattered brown and grey
like the local old men who go
to sit outside the Texaco
each morning to mumble and grimly joke
and breathe and blow tobacco smoke
and squint at cars as they pass by
beneath the solemn bearded sky
stained by smolderings in the hills
shrouding barns and abandoned mills
which loom up wraith-like from the past
and stand remembering to the last.

Beside the brooding sea

[From: The Last Journal of Gwyllyn]

Imagine, friends,
the gloaming skies,
the ember ends,
the grey goodbyes,
the starlight shining in the eyes
beside the brooding sea.

The tide comes in
to cleanse the soul
from every sin;
the white waves roll
and midnight bells in the belfry toll
beside the brooding sea.

The gulls are tired
and taciturn,
quite uninspired;
the waters churn
and in the moonlight softly burn
beside the brooding sea.

And through the long
and raven night,
the wind whips strong,
the stars shine bright,
and eyes keep vigil in silver light
beside the brooding sea.

O Father God

Last prayer composed by Fr. Cedric of Ulster before his holy death in 1780:

O Father God of greatest might
who dwells within eternal light,
or rather you, being Light itself,
illumine eternity with Yourself -
I stand before you now unveiled
beholding where in life I failed:
Ninety years I had by grace
to seek your bright and holy face,
to serve you as I thought I should
and to do my fellow man some good.
But with the good, I did more ill,
sought my own and not your will.
I see it all: the grief, the pain,
the joy in others I have slain,
unknowingly, yes, at the time,
but now I know my every crime.
Repair the damage I have done
upon the earth, beneath the sun.
Every person I have slighted,
every good thing I have blighted,
wash and renew now through your Word,
through your Son whose prayer you heard
to make creation new again
freed from every stain of sin.
O recreate my little life,
bring new goodness out of strife;
the pain I caused, please now forgive
so eternally I with you may live.
Amen.

Ten thousand years ago

The sun was bright and beautiful
and cast a friendly eye
upon the laden boughs of fruit
new-swelling under sky.

But ice encased the waking moon
arising from its bed
and in the warmth it shook away
bright dewdrops from its head.

They fell as cold and heavy rain
upon the gladsome trees
and drowned them all beneath the flood
of deep and trackless seas.

And now they sway in water-winds
but bear no more their fruit
in darkness miles beneath the waves
where they have taken root.

This happened on the turning earth
ten thousand years ago
and what bright fruit they would have borne
the world will never know.

Snow-tears

Snow-tears are soft upon the cheek
beneath a brittle porcelain moon;
delicate griefs of nocturnal-noon
falling into a gladsome creek
that wends off through a shadow-wood
conversing of all things fair and good.

Moon-peaks are luminous in the sun
draped in blankets of alabaster dust;
the clouds in the east are turning to rust:
the bonfire-bloom of dawn has begun.
But snow-tears still fall with quiet charm
and soft on the cheek they do no harm.

O! to breathe the blessëd air

[From: The Last Journal of Gwyllyn]

O! to breathe the blessëd air
full of pearl and blazing gold,
of juniper and marigold,
on distant islands ever-fair.

The sundering waves surge like hills
crashing down to very hell,
with deeps that teem with krakens fell
- but hark, the song of whippoorwills!

Rising soft above the fray,
a song no tumult could defile
from a blissful garden-isle
blooming out in Ever-Day!

O! for wings to hasten there,
across the wide and surging sea,
to find the fair birds calling me
from the bright and blessëd air!

Weep for beauty

Weep for beauty while it gleams
bright and holy in the world;
attend in gladness while it seems
the shadow-flag of night is furled;
in waking dreams of diamond-eyes,
of distilled roses in the veins,
of bursting sunfire in the skies
falling bright like gilded rains;
of oceans churning wild at noon,
of twilight calm and cobalt-graced;
of joy beneath the battered moon,
of breathing zephyrs apple-laced;
of ruddy warmth in marrow-roots,
of spirits quickened into flame
by banqueting on blazing fruits
swelling ripe without a name;
weep for beauty while it sings,
and joyful tears will wash away
the veil that daily duty brings
and fling new light upon the day.

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.

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.

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.

Some new goodness

Through the twining leafless boughs
a light came soft into my eyes,
my sleeping spirit to arouse
beneath the grey and shapeless skies.

At the reading of the words:
Mary's union with her Son,
a silence rapt the very birds
for some new goodness had begun.

The calm light and the quietude
lingered in the winter air
and did into my heart intrude,
bestowing grace and longing fair.

And when the brilliancy had waned
beneath the grey and shapeless skies, 
I kept the light that I had gained
within my gently closing eyes.

The End of Autumn

Leaves, like shriveled butterflies,
ride on the last of the autumn sighs,
beyond the reach of birches grasping
with white fingers, while crows rasping
winter incantations, invoke the wind
of the northern wastes now to send
their coldness upon these muted lands;
spruce-maidens wring their tender hands
and shudder together in their green dresses,
as the wind blows wild the golden tresses
of broomsedge copses, beneath the moon
that trespassed the bounds of day too soon,
and now sails high in the gloaming skies
as the last fire of autumn serenely dies.

December Courting

From: The Recollections of Judge William Granger (1843 -1935).

Our breathing spawned ghosts into the air
which haunted our winter wanderings there;
the crooked old fingers of frowning trees
shook at us laughing in the frigid breeze;
the noon sun at least seemed glad to shine
upon our path resplendent and fine.
We made our way down to Thornton Force,
which last time frightened your little horse,
so that day we left him behind in his stall;
(we preferred to stroll arm-in-arm withal).
The noise of the waters overwhelmed our ears;
the torrent rushed past like the passing of years;
the passing of years, 'tis now fifty years hence,
and the memory has been dear to me ever since.

Truant from the world he went

From 'Tales and Verses' by C. James Gwyllyn (1871-1914)

 

Truant from the world he went

into a churchyard outside Kent.
Business had taken him by that way
on a cold but serene December day.

 

An overnight snow had fallen there

and made of the place a garden fair,
white and hushed beneath the sky,
where the wind was but a gentle sigh.

 

Among the stones he quietly strolled

as the nearby church-bell deeply tolled.
He stopped to recline beneath an oak,
and to himself these words he spoke:

 

It must be peaceful underground

undisturbed by sight or sound,
a place to remember and forget,
beneath a snowy coverlet.

 

The fallen leaves are in repose,

a winter wind now softly blows,
but hidden under the frigid earth,
is a peace of more exquisite worth.

 

The weary there find lasting slumber

in bed-chambers of sturdy lumber
and in the darkness forever dream
beyond the pale world's fading gleam.

 

For long moments he sat there very still

then, seemingly by great force of will,
he stood and departed through the gate,
and hurried along, for he was late.

Wintering Birds

From "The Last Journal of Gwyllyn"

 

Fly from here, you little birds

chattering bright with happy words;

your fellow kin have fled away -

but you have wings, why do you stay?

 

Flitting about in airy ruts

seeking to fill your little guts

with rotting berries here all day -

but you have wings, why do you stay?

 

Your kindred sought a warmer clime

and you stayed here for wintertime

where trees are brown and skies are grey -

but you have wings, why do you stay?

 

In your winter nests, O sprites,

you must shiver on frigid nights,

and shiver still at light of day -

but you have wings, why do you stay?

 

You have wings, and strength of life,

so why endure through winter strife?

Your wings could take you far away,

but you have deigned with me to stay.

 

You have deigned with me to stay

and with me watch the dying day

fade from hues of sombre grey

and into shadows fade away.

Lines Composed in Moorsgate Cemetery

From: "The Last Journal of Gwyllyn"

The grand trees are voiceless in November,

but the songs of leaves they still remember;
they beg for alms with every member
from the sun which now is a dying ember.

But the beauty of each object is distilled

into a light, with which this place is filled
to brimming over - and my soul is thrilled
though my frame by autumn winds is chilled.

Many of the markers have crumbled apart
from the slow eroding of the years. A cart
of labourers clatters past; they depart
leaving me alone, but for sparrows that dart

and dance above my weary head,
while for an hour or so I make my bed.
Damp leaves are laid out yellow and red,
bright carpets covering the quiet dead.

But neither sombre nor lonely is this place;
it imparts a rather exquisite grace
as the mutual fate of our fretful race
is vividly presented before my face.

I behold their beginnings and their ends
and the years between, which gently lends
a strange light to my own life, and sends
me, as I stride homeward in autumn winds,

indeed rapt in a pensive quietude,
but not to morbidly grieve and brood
but to instead, with joy, in a hopeful mood,

more lovingly live my life renewed.

A Shadow of Longing

A very noon of orange and gold

flickers like fire despite the cold
beneath the twining maple boughs,
a living canopy in which to house,
as though in a tabernacle, the sheen
of blazing glory where once was green,
which whispers now with a gentle voice
to all who pass to make a choice:
To seek this world and hold it fast
though it fades away and will not last,
or to find, through all these dying things,
albeit in faintest glimmerings,
glimpses of the Light that ever shines
beyond this world of fragile signs
which live for a time then swiftly die
like golden leaves that soon will lie
upon the ground, withered and grey,
then turn to dust and fade away.
O! Nothing of beauty in this world lasts,
but while they endure, each one casts
a shadow of longing across the eyes
and points to the Life that never dies.

In St. Mary's Kirkyard

From "The Last Journal of Gwyllyn"

The wind has found me hidden here,

beneath a grey-stone sky:
the soft grey-stone that presses near
and into which I would fly.

But wisdom is found in the fallen leaves
heaped here and there in piles,
and in the grass that shivers as it grieves
along these quiet aisles.

The aged rowan has shed its tears
of crimson on the earth
where grass has failed these many years,
through many springs of mirth.

But larks still flit about and sing
among the dwindling green,
with all the joy they had in spring
despite winds cold and keen.

And the low stone-sky is calling out
for me to take my leave
from shivering grass and rowans stout,
from larks who will not grieve.

For on the moor-paths beneath the sky,
through heather-banks in the sun,
I came at last to the kirkyard nigh,
where these weary days are done.

But grieve not grass, nor fallen leaves:
but sing with the joyful kin
who fly in the grey heaven that heaves
over new paths that here begin.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow greets with weary calm

and brings a tender healing balm;
the moors are filled with golden rum,
the light of bright Elysium.

Nay! not rum, but amber wine

distilled from winter eglantine,
nepenthe-nectar to forget
all the griefs that we have met.

And at eventide we sleep

to dream of joy and never weep;
no tears again will fall for sorrow,
but may for gladness on the morrow.

Peacemaker

From "The Last Journal of Gwyllyn" - by C. James Gwyllyn (1871-1914), published posthumously in 1921.

Make your peace a whisper said

at the threshold of weary sleep,
as if quite soon I would be dead -
and yet this moved me not to weep
nor did it fill my heart with dread:
instead a gladness quivered there,
a pang of joy at tidings fair.

But make your peace - what means this?

How best should I achieve such ends?
To grant each ally a farewell kiss
and to each enemy a full amends?
To make right all that has gone amiss?
Gracious would such gestures be,
but not in the time now left to me.

Inclined myself then to my inmost heart,
which ever to me seemed quite serene -
yet behold! what rage there pulls me apart,
what seething old furies, bitter and mean,
over every ill word, every slightest dart:
a war boiling over, which I scarcely contain,
but fought with no foe except my own pain.

Such dark brooding armies gathering there!

Such bonfires blazing and surging high,
such smokes obscuring the heavens fair -
oh! does all this go with me when I die?
And to think I was someone given to prayer!
I need to quell the warfare in my own heart,
and bring peace to that realm before I depart.

Such a chance to prepare seems a tender grace,

a merciful concern for your health, O my soul -
to prevent you from beholding His loving Face
while still clutching bitterness within your control.
Having fought the good fight, now finish the race!
Bring your lifetime of hurts, injustice, and loss
and unite them with His pain upon His own Cross!

Then your arms will be His outstretched to the world,
not with fists clenched in bitterness, cursing your fate,
not with hatred and fuming, but with Mercy unfurled,
bringing Light to all darkness, and Love to all hate,
no matter what abuses your enemies have hurled.
Then Peace beyond telling will be yours from the Lord,
and you will go in peace likewise to your eternal reward.