The Émigré’s Lament - Prose Poem by Greg Patrick

 

 

The Émigré’s Lament 

  

"There's a feeling I get when I look to the west, and my spirit is crying for leaving. In my thoughts I have seen rings of smoke through the trees, And the voices of those who stand looking. Oh, it makes me wonder"-Led Zeppelin "Stairway to Heaven"  

You say that your homeland's shores are bleak and grey in contrast to a distant land, yet there has never been a light so radiant that it has shone on the Boyne or Nile that can be matched by a single smile… 

Yours. 

Nor a presence that can fail to inspire the question when you make your entrance into a room: "Why does the sun then rise from the west? Why the dawn so early this eve?" A brightness that does not blind but make one see beauty for the first time. "Who's that who looks so like a star?" Who bears their brightness in each smile? 

As one can hear the sound of the sea in a shell, one can see the starlight in that gaze and smile. There has never been a nomad-humbling desert so vast that has not been equal to that of your absence nor an oasis so sweet to a nomad's parched lips that it has not known a greater sweetness in the one word song of your name. Not a mirage that vision but a truth that beauty walks beneath the stars and with their light, the echoes of the song are the sighs that follow your absence and the sense of wonder inspire as many songs like the first kindlings of a votive flame the first breath before a duet and no darkness so deep that befalls heart or land that cannot be held at bay by its rare light. 

Like the nomad who steps away from his comrades in the midst of a song by a caravan fire to look at the stars, standing in solitude as the sultry desert winds lend ventriloquism to his sigh...so does one think of her by the stars. 

Like a dream of the gloaming light of the midnight sun to one lingering by the northern sea with the same wish brought to the horizon, and its loss a sacrifice of a dream to a shrine that no pilgrim visits anymore save one who has faith yet in his goddess. 

You say your homeland is cold and grey but what darkness is there that has not been brightened by a light in its midst like a candle by which one offers a heart-felt wish to the angelic. Like an isolated star by which one below stands and dreams… so far its brightness but no less inspiring its light. As surface of sea mirrors the dawn so too is that smile a reflection of its radiance beheld.  

Vision of beauty behind green eyes do not yearn for the land over the sea with the greenest eyes for gaze that would look over seas for you yearning with a depth deeper than the ocean… As one looks into them to see the summer sky and sea.  

The brightness of the surface seems to reflect the depth of your eyes. As great as the bright beauty seen on the surface as the sun sets over the western sea and the night never felt darker nor you farther. The brightness of the surface like an indication of the depth of the eyes. 

Gaze reflected their admirer like a nomad’s face in an oasis or sequestered tidepool of dream. A sigh to the last light of the setting sun of summer a wordless interpretation of your name. A sigh to the horizon after a distant sail or plane leaving away like a prayer to an angel invoked on eve of battle, distant as a star’s brightness darkened by the city lights after abandoned on the shore.  

Eyes worthy of the person, a gaze startlingly and impossibly blue. Voluminous as the shelves it would take to do justice in words yet understated. Their fathomless depth that of the Irish Sea, yet more so. Breath caught in mid-song like a dream-differed in the strands of a dream catcher when beauty before words proved song obsolete.  

Fare thee well.

 

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.