Bardspell - Prose Poem by Greg Patrick

 

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.

Greg Patrick - A dual citizen of Ireland and the states, Greg Patrick is an Irish/Armenian traveller poet and the son of a Navy enlisted man. He is also a former Humanitarian aid worker who worked with great horses for years and loves the wilds of Connemara and Galway in the rain where he's written many stories. Greg spent his youth in the South Pacific and Europe and currently resides in Galway, Ireland and sometimes the states.