Bardspell
Prose Poem
By Greg Patrick
“Every
life is in many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting
robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love,
but always meeting ourselves.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses
When the raucous laughter rang too hollow
upon the inn’s walls and too great the solitude of the
void left by the throng intruded the party
looked to the empty shadows by the hearth.
“Wherever is the bard this eve?” it was
asked.
As if the shadows massing at the threshold
were granted form and face, one who was both
mirage and nomad was conjured forth it
seemed like a ghost. It was not song alone he ushered
in but a potent eloquential silence and a
sigh that does not lie betrayed in its cadence a broken
duet supplied now only by echoes. The night belongs to the
poet with the unbroken dawn in his
eyes and words.
Because a bard’s eyes know there is a
greater emptiness and void than chairs to fill. His words
are like the laughter of the curious
passerby in the night that fill the dark and outside with
laughter. Will there to be light by word
and the dark is only that. Nothing more.
In the beginning as in the end there is
the word to confront the emptiness out there to the creative
voice.
A gift. A curse? A fulfilment of
emptiness?
Either way the bard steps to the light
like a soloist by the crossroad's lantern and allow others
that light and voice between intervals of
dark.
But his muse…Where was she this eve? Her
voice like that of a falconer, so uplifting... the one
voice that could bring him down to earth. Though
mastery of the art preceded him there was
something expressive in the entrance of
all who crossed the threshold, each arriving with their
own story to listen to the bard’s great
ones retold. Their postures like notes of a song broodings
of hate and love of jubilance and despair.
Silence greeted his appearance like one
after words of truth that only came out during anger.
Haggard and disheveled as an almseeker yet
noble in his bearing as a god by another guise
testing the hearts of mortals. Against a
background of chill rain like a hailing of a silver tribute
upon a dark prince he lingered at the
threshold like forbidden words wavering on the lips.
Like a ghost reacquainted with the mortal
world blinking in the firelight and his expressive eyes
betrays his trade like a metallurgy left
untended in the fire and crucible too long by a careless
hand. His gaze ablaze with a Promethean
enlightenment destined to chains.
Dark eyes like a lightless predecessor to
fire closed savouring where cold of night met habitation
of fire ere he crossed to the light and
eyes accustomed to darkness saw those waiting in
silhouette like angelic figures awaiting a
new arrival to hallowed halls.
His tattered raiment like Icaran moth
wings seared by the light, betraying a man burnt by
radiance beyond his reach, flared like
rebel angel wings inviting metamorphosis from the listless
intoxication of patrons to Renaissance of
being and reawakening of greater thirst than even the
castaway knows who at last succumbs to
drinking the sea. From messages in bottles
bidding one to forget. The words by
contrast dared them see and forsake the bottle as a
sieve...mirroring facades that seem
suspended in a glacial tear.
He closed his eyes into the song, his
touch beckoning on the strings as if trying to draw the
moment in time back. Searching look
betrayed in a gaze upon another’s face bearing haunting
semblance to his muse but the words ceased
mid-song for they belonged to but one under the
skies. Sonorous in a way few can fathom,
save if they listen with the undelved heart.
The tenacity of dream’s embrace when one
has to part ways and of what followed: broken chords
and drawn swords...words lost to time like
heretical ideals cast to the pyre for the world has
changed though he would not.
The brazier-lit flames had long since
dwindled...time to his rhyme lost all meaning to his
spellbound audience whose conversation had
ceased of its own accord like the lowing of a herd
sensing the presence of the untamed and
hunter in their midst. And no glasses raised that would
hold unbidden memory at bay-they thirsted
now for something else the more keenly-knew the
thirst of the nomad for the oasis and
beheld the desert surrounding them for the first time.
The bard’s words like a table’s candles
brought in a tray became like the dualism of flame-
warming benignly then burning-holding
shadow at bay but borne in the torches of a dark army-
cast at the wielder of burning words in a
world playing with fire.
From aerial vantage point he seemed to
have been up lifted by words like the guardian of a lofty
tower holding impassive vigil over siege
fires allowing none close except for the intrusion of
names and faces in moonlight recollection.
The chords and lines drawn like a
dreamcatcher strung over a loved one’s cot. Like dream
differed and nightmare gazing like two
separated lovers between dividing chords of the
dreamcatcher words of endearment between a
rebel cell’s bars. Like a political prisoner of a
queen’s heart. Like one lost in a maze so
captivating the gaze.
Like blind bard Homer called back for
there are heroes yet unsung in the new worlds beyond the
mariner’s eyes on the eternal horizons
beyond the wakes.
Like a shadow enthroned he stepped to the
harp and like two rival councils the hearth fire and
shadow flanked him. The dark caress of
shadow and the serpentine patterns of flame were cast
over his face like snakes charmed by his song.
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