Final Conversation: A Wedding Song (with the Iliad, Geryoneis and Homeric Hymn to Demeter)
Final Conversation
A Wedding Song
Epigram
To what, O beloved bridegroom, may I compare to you?
To a slender sapling, most of all, do I compare you
(Sappho 115)
Be strong, saith my heart:
For I am a soldier; I have seen worse sights than this
( Iliad, Book 11)
Through the shadowy fogs of time
I came from afar with a chorus in song and lyre silent
I am listening with a load recorder and a dried fountain pen
I reached my hand to the void I couldn’t see through
My gaze is your torch in the darkness
I only had stories to offer
And what can I do with them
Not much, just fractured words, puzzling, error-filled
But I hear a myriad of voices surging forth
Tearing up the night from disjointed bodies
Struggling at the brink of memory’s edge and oblivion
I said this was our wedding song
And I shall sing it still
Though my lips stay sealed, only words to be written
Heros and their flowers
They rushed through the lands and the water, with weapons and wounds
Dripping, I gather a poppy soaking in his blood
O Heros, your glory was written by your flesh
With thousands of forgotten names graven on tombstones
I heard the bitter wind through their armours’ weave
And the weeping of his wife, an infant cradled in her arms
I heard the father whisper a wish to his cherished son
Now he is sleeping under six feet of rotting autumn leaves
I felt the body of my beloved collapsing into my dream
I knew it was time to follow them
The gods loomed above, fate trailed behind
Yet we race on, faster and faster
Like a shooting star, leaving a short path of light
A Conversation between the Iliad(Homer), and Memorial(Oswald)
Cleaved flesh and bones
Your eyes, void as a pyre, only my soul ablaze within
Our figures overlapping with one in the camera lens
Your laughter, shards of shattered glass, falling upon volcano’s crest
Falling upon my melting limbs
I heard the sound of my skull cracking
In triumph, you put on your black leather jacket
You raised a glass of wine to freedom and future
I am left trailing in your swift world
And finally, my heads were sinking down
By the hot summer rain, the passionate caress of my lover
I was disappearing into the red breeze of your glory
I see myself resurrecting in you
I am inevitably drawn to you, you are death to me
A conversation between Geryoneis(Stesichorus), and Autobiography of Red (Carson)
Down to the underworld
I was the soul you missed on your way to the underworld
On my way to London, Paris, Rome and Athens
I remembered her promise to her girl
“You shall never suffer again” — I am already in Hades
She was mourning for her tragic daughter
She is mourning for her static life
I was singing with my fragmented body
While the mothers and lovers are still escaping from each other
She must keep her gaze lowered in men’s presence
I lift my head before my bridegroom
I stood firm, while you journeyed onward
I know you await, yet I do not turn
Tis my love that abducted me to the abyss
A conversation between Homeric Hymn to Demeter and Mother Love(Dove)
Epilogue
O my beloved, I saw you for the first time
O my beloved, let this be my last glance
I passed on my voice
My voice resounding in the River Oblivion
When we turned to dust
Our tales will live for us
To immortality