Sparkatale

Phantoms and Phantasies

 

Oh dearest ghost, how far away you seem,

Your memory seemed so fresh

And still alive as when we met,

Of such a sunlit character,

And of remembered suffering.

 

The memory of how your tragedies

Rang out beyond your words,

And how my heart took pity then

Upon one so maligned

And so misunderstood.

 

Still, when the thunder came,

Your happiness eclipsed my own,

And as the rain broke forth,

Cascading down the hill toward me,

Shadows danced among the falling droplets,

The earth grew ever darker

And the shadows danced still on.

 

I heard you praying for the thunder

Underneath the roaring of the sky

As my world sunk underwater

And the light was washed away

And hope had vanished.

 

I felt then so alone beneath the waves,

A nereid lost deep in unwritten myth,

And you were gone as I lay there drowning,

The new-formed sea took hold

And the fury of the thunder rang still on.

 

I saw you running from the storm you conjured,

And, looking back, you gazed into my eyes,

The fury of the fleeing met the terror of the drowning,

And that face, so pitiless, I no longer knew.

 

Fleeing then the storm, you ran to sunlight,

It strikes the hillside in the distance,

Your calm repose belies your long lamenting,

For darkness lies over distant waters,

Shrouding one you longed to forget,

And in the sunlit blindness,

That darkness so intransigent preserves a ghostly conscience

As you sigh, relieved, for the pain had struck another.

 

19/3/19