Nosidam Elegies: The Sixth Elegy

6 

The Muse has left the building
and I am alone in Helicon
to drink the solitary spring
that gushes forth against the barren rock
and echoes my lone figure
standing in the edge of paradise
to endure the memory of you
who pushed my frail heart to bravado
and endure these smallish things.
You are, and now you were. No more.
If it is me then it is not you, you who disdain it
but it is not me or you
It is not us
there is no us. We are not, not yet
not ever. But did we become what we never were?
Was it what it was then
and when was it where it is now?
Memory, your mother still, betrays you.

The Muse has left the building
and I contemplate in Helicon.
Is it real, really there?
Like places on a map I can trace
with my fingers your neck
and ideas spring like lilacs from your footsteps
where ideals are crushed by pragmatic heels.
I had lost her.
She by whose invocation I started
who drew the tips of my unruly tongue
to forge out the splendor of the world
in the intricacy of the word
and we were felled by them as, laden with meaning
they capsized our Titanic.
Her meaning was my meaning
her life my life
her departure my end.

The Muse has left the building
and I wonder in Helicon.
Is it belief that closes one to wonder
or wonder that springs from belief?
It is what you do, what you show
a cycle, an embrace
the hands that grasp each other in pleasant quarrel
the lips
are they enough?
The answer is in the wind
where the breeze carries your smell
when I do not look
cannot look
pain is in the eye of the beholden
It, is in the blood that fuels the gaze.
You have always wondered what was your scent
and when I wore an old shirt I understood
It, is the scent of the past
old and static, coldly dynamic
grappling at the ropes of reminiscing.

The Muse has left the building
and all is quiet in Helicon.
Did it sing to you like it sang to me
when it sang like the starry night
when the heavenly bodies swung in symphony
and it twinkled lullabies?
Did it fly from you like it fled to me
when it fled like the feather flung free
when the papers scattered in a gust of wind
and they floated down in perfect chaos?
Did it cry from you like it cried in me
when it cried; the widow, the orphan, the dead
when the night came in so the sunlight fled
and by your goodbye it died and bled?
It is not an answer.
It is a question I never had
because I asked you of it
and the reply was no.

A Rediscovery of Lightness: May endings

Pink petal blossoms
strewn on the ground come autumn
They are pretty still.

~o~

The flapping curtains
Billowing waves by the beach
A summer morning.