BIRTH

Plain not for the fading Star this blessed Season;

instead, shine your soul’s beacon

upon that nascent orblet burrowed in the spiral

of its timeless Within.

Invoke that eternal Flame, pilgrims,

to its deathless whorls bequeath your treasures,

these distilled drops of truest joy

your inner eye weeps,

that no mortal heart could ever claim.

Let these rise as plumed jewels

into Dark's spangled Bell, its liquescent tongues

this late Autumn Night

sounding no sorrowful knell, but speaking healing,

repose, the springing forth of renewed Light.

Did not the skies ring gold through eventide,

ere the gloaming fell

upon shorn pastures and browning dells?

Shall mere flesh lament that which

our Mother honours and the Elements praise,

for the Universe so ordained?

We, who dispute the heavens' every sign,

and seek Tyche's hand to man's favour to incline,

could not fathom the whorls of divine Design.

Nay, we tread a limitless path through Time,

Beginning to sacred Beginning,

for who, votaries of Life, would ponder Death,

when the Infinite wills no end?

© 2016 Lilium Candidum

Lily's Verse

Image: http://time.com/4213747/star-birth-chamaeleon-complex



HARVEST MOON

The winnowing Wind pauses in mid-flow,

scattering her soliloquy

to waking stars, for the Oak would speak,

exhort his every root and branch

to minister to a gentler Light,

to the Harvest Moon that holds the Night.

I stumble into the now still scent

of wildflowers she bears through Seasons

that know no frontiers,

their fluid portraits born of Twilight's Eye,

dissolving each Dawn

into a Sky that wears wings.

Time returns a lost memory, a triton shell

that yielded the sound of its Sea to a Soul

that crept into its chosen crypt

under the lamp, for to preserve this treasure

of lives agone in deepest darkness.

She, the Artist in my dreams, wields a vision

I shall never possess.

Nay, her renderings must be and live

in a lapis mist as an airy gem, for my heart

waits by a ring of stone.

A falling leaf catches Autumn's first tune;

a golden harp string thrums

through the tremulous silver Dark,

abrim with voices I do not hear, yet know.

The Season grows,

moment by copper moment, into the ellipse

of my own Pearl Island of inspiration

in an ink-dark Eternity.

© 2016 Lily's Verse

Lilium Candidum

Image: THE HARVEST MOON

Source: commons.wikimedia.org

Artist: Samuel Palmer

PEACE II

A white calm rests upon the tumult;

Life and Death coalesce

for a moment, arcing as a new vault

over an ocean of broken breaths.

Memory's silver tides await

a forgotten Angel;

she, who once strode upon the Light,

extends a bruised wing

in the dark, mirroring the keeling

of petals in the wind,

of leaves on sky-tinted waters,

echoing the life-kindling sussurus

of the eternal Fount.

The whisper of wounded white pinions

waken the warrior upon shorn earth,

this valiant victor 

who sheds tears too long forsaken

where a child cast her joy

into the Sun, where a hermit tended

the bleeding Dove,

where a mystic blessed

marauding brigands, where a priestess'

invocation rent the heavens.

A new Dawn tints the sighing River,

as, in his reflection,

the hero glimpses the fallen.

© 2016 Lily's Verse

Lilium Candidum

Image: BUTTERFLIES

Source: www.the-athenaeum.org

Artist: Odilon Redon

JOURNEY VII

A changeling light streamed across the forest floor;

flowing, pearly fire bathed my yearning brow.

A Knowing I knew not I possessed spoke,

the voiceless voice of my fervent seeking that Time

may not claim.

"Not merely Moon echoing Sun, but a cosmic agency

consecrated to Beginnings

revives your Soul and Eye, this Night.

This Poet of the Hour and Prophet of the ages ordains

that you here meet your newer self

touched by radiant Hands that shape eternal skies.

You who tread a changeful course

to impermanent calm, must forswear illusions,

your fears cast into foregone currents,

as the tree that surrenders its shadow of the moment

to the moving river.

Shall tomorrow's tides receive your mortal path,

your earthly endeavours colour some distant Dawn?

Would you command the reed of the Infinite?

Swear allegiance to the Light that powers your vessel,

upon this shore make a sacred vow, 

this incunabulum of the deepest transformation.

Sole with the diminuition of vanity shall your truest, 

purest journey commence."

© 2016 Lily's Verse

Lilium Candidum

Image: MOONLIT LANDSCAPE

Artist: John Moore of Ipswich

Source: www.pinterest.com

DREAM V

A crackle glass Moon weeps

her broken rays

over the silver-blue nocturne

of the woodland stream,

upon the sediment

of our childish dreams, sisters.

My heart drums alone,

receiving this hour's legacy,

a beauty that at once

wounds the soul

and renders it whole.

Yet, my solitary path shall trace

an eternal question,

its answer in a sky that in vain

seeks your eye.

My breath I bound to a vow

spoken in secret

to these woods, where I invoked

the resonance of earth

amid ghosts of yellow garlands

and flowered trails.

Lines and curves of violet ink

emerge upon my page as though

from a waking dream,

stringing together memories of

leaf, branch and blossom,

moments of life, laughter and death. 

These, I shall inearth 

under our willow, for our Summers 

shall not live in another’s dream.

© 2016 Lily's Verse

Lilium Candidum

Image: PAISATGE NOCTURNE AMB DUES NOIES

Source: commons.wikimedia.org

Artist: Joan Brull i Vinoyles

HOPE II

An unrest like music afire

lifts the mist,

stirring the silenced Soul

to speak, to call to the gold

upon the horizon,

that it may seek

the window of its wound.

Despair's blade dulls in the

hush of the half-light,

as an Angel's tears fall upon

the salt of bloodied ground,

that Earth may weep

no more for the fallen.

A child regards the Abode

of her deepest fears,

tracing the blear edge of the

Dark Moon drifting past

veils and starlight, loving Her

whose shadowed hues

they impute to malediction

and misfortune.

Under a searing Summer Sun,

the parched land rises

to skies suffused with hues

of a harvest it alone sees,

awaiting fluid footfalls across

arid heavens.

A trustful emplacement within

the darkest Dark

prepares to receive the Light.

A rite of Breath at Life's altar,

affirmation of its rhythm -

this is Hope,

and the Spirit's elevation

its consummation.

© 2016 Lily's Verse

Lilium Candidum

Image: ARCHANGELS

Artist: Bela Čikoš Sesija

Source: galerijadeci.hr

BEAUTY XVI

The mystery of Life she expounds

to your inmost flame;

your vessel she blesses, that it may

heed Time's decree.

No mortal affliction shall impede

your pathway to her favour;

the deaf may hear her tones,

the blind, see her light,

the mute, chant her praise,

the lame, sway in her radiance,

for she moves the Soul to

hear and speak, to dance and sing.

Her whisper whelms

the tyrant's roar, her touch enfeebles

the barbs of man's contempt.

Her tints she rains upon your domain,

even upon shores of your unbelief

that repel tides of Hope.

Her voice you would discern

in the moonlight tinkling upon the rill;

its silver tones take

unto your heart. Seek her, as the lily

that lines the grave

looks up to the Sun she no more sees.

Call to her in silent worship,

as a swan to the one rainbow that

knows its death-song.

In dreams, journey to your Spirit's birth,

to where Truth's golden shadow falls,

for, upon its eternal crest,

Beauty renews herself.

© 2016 Lily's Verse

Lilium Candidum

Image: THE VENUS THAT WAS NEVER FINISHED

Source: www.the-athenaeum.org

Artist: John Duncan

JOURNEY VI

The Calm after the Storm rises about

my bruised and broken form

as a stone-white Temple,

a shadow-lit space for contemplation

where the very air revels in an

inviolable Stillness,

and the raw, ravaging emptiness in my

soul transmutes into the echo

of a faraway ringing within the Silence.

In the ampleness of this Hollow,

Pathway to Rebirth, Womb of Healing,

my wretched spirit discerns

the voice of the Void,

my pulse, the pull of a Star

that breathed gold where I now kneel.

My flame grows

into its misty Orb, dissolving into the

dusky air-scape that

fuses Time, Being and Memory.

For a deathless moment, I burn gold,

guiding the rise and fall

of the Wheel, leading the Seasons.

Here, where Death hunts Life

and prating stifles Wisdom, I seek Home

in the blazing blue of Mystery's halls,

for, by their pure light,

Elements, Nature and Aether unite,

for to lend our words meaning.

© 2016 Lily's Verse

Lilium Candidum

Image source: tvorchestvof.blogspot.com

Artist: Rafał Olbiński

FAITH II

Melody and chime reverent combine,

bursting into light,

not a sun-kindled blaze,

but one wakened by a tinder of Dawn

upon an altar wrought of

worshipful notes and greening Hope.

The Faith I forsook in fervid fury floats

upon a cyan waft,

beaming its gold to Apollo's height,

calling fearful fledglings to flight.

And one feathered flame,

Source and creation allied,

harmony and horizon on wing,

pipes a blue-grey strain that brings

forth restoring rain,

new hues to fading Summer blooms

that trace the last parched verso

of the Season's chronicle.

In a crystal drop dwells the grace that

shall crown some Autumn's

first sheaf, blessing the Circle,

though its journey be brief.

I bide, ungrateful, still, upon the Path, 

nor Hope, nor Faith in my heart,

in hands the Poet's tome

vast as his spirit, its heart open to Home.

The sounds of his soul 

I shall shall take for my victuals,

the sky's outpourings for my drink.

Sole such shall guide my steps

to substance and strength.

© 2016 Lily's Verse

Lilium Candidum

Image source: www.pinterest.com

Artist: Vladimir Kush

VOICE

The shadow of a lost Voice converged

with my own as I ran

to catch the distance, the next drop of

a dying Sun. Fear propelled

my unreckoning self, one that perceives

not Life within stasis.

A blue mist parted, unveiling a dream of

roses that await a child's wonder

upon a ground green with legacies of

blooming and birth denied,

with thoughts she dared not think.

Yet, reminiscences were not forbidden

her. In such she revelled,

marking the hours of Night with rising

decans beneath the seamless presence

of the shimmering Eternal.

The Voice, no more a shadow, spoke its

ageless bequest:

"Heed those who have seen, who see,

the last robin merge

with the last branch, for they tell of

a wholesome transformation

that needs not man's inconstant hands

nor his courage-less heart."

"They who have heard, who hear,

a Fire cut the wind, the crimson faltering

of fledgling wings,

the music of infant feet stilled,

shedding tears of blood for Innocence

defiled know of an airless Dark."

"A thousand Suns could not sate its

black thirst. Nay, it shall claim

Flow and Tides, till word, note, step and

gaze no more touch Mirror and Eye."

"Still, silver spheres of Hope and Peace

beckon in conjunction.

Earth bends to the shape of Silence,

Nature, to the Mystery of Being.

Shall you, mortal children, as your Mother,

unbar the Portals to Light?"

© 2016 Lily's Verse

Lilium candidum

Image: GIRL BY A WOODLAND STREAM

Source: www.pinterest.com

Artist: Edgar Barclay

DREAM IV

Stone and spate marked my birth.

Still, I grew to know leaf

and butterfly, even as the ground

swallowed my feet.

Unfurling fronds of tenderest green

set free my paths,

feathering against Autumn's

variegated crystal mirror.

Scarlet aves streak across October's

changing parchment

as bleeding arrows, scrivening lost,

lightless hours, my pulse,

upon a breeze that shall not hear me.

Of earth I am not, nor of water,

fire or sky.

I am a child of the sleepless aether.

Blossoms of journeys past

slumber in the chill forest air;

a spark of trellis of Suns and Moons

awaits me in celestial spheres.

Father's Summer roses, 

dead Stars of living coral 

and palest pink,

lie within the Mystic's soul,

layered between her memories

of joy and sorrow, 

of ascension and vanquishment.

In winged dreams I shall ride 

the updraught of her essence into a

distant vision,

into a moment of bright birth,

that I may find life amid my shadows.

© 2016 Lily's Verse

Lilium Candidum

Image: LE PRINCIPE D'INCERTITUDE

Source: www.pinterest.com

Artist: René Magritte

THE MYSTIC II

A tearless cry is your first silent pledge,

the silver key that unlocks

the doorway to breath, that you may

yield to Fate's Circle.

This herald of your path's commencement,

your newborn wail,

falls through the Sandglass' neck,

raising your spirit into the Now,

into a communion with the Moment

your youthful steps shall forswear,

as you contemplate its fore and aft,

for such is a mortal's wont.

Ponder not Time's flow, but his ubiquity,

for this spiral deity reigns

beside his God.

Aye, he receives the priestess' orison;

his Eye follows the mystic's journey;

his Voice punctuates the poet's praise.

Resonance of their devotion,

pathway and art he gives unto their skies,

that they may bide infolded

in azure troves. These they shall rain upon

hearts that lament the world's tumult,

for such are sensible of the Love

that transforms the spirit's peregrination

into profoundest expressions

of hand and eye.

Therefore, weep, not in despair, but that you

may breathe anew, as an infant

in Time's own arms reaffirming your pact

with Being, with its seeking.

Gather unto you ancient echoes,

for these promise an easing of the Disorder

that dulls Life's silver flow.

Beauty and Truth shall prevail, mayhap under

Stars yet unseen, where you shall

tread plains of joy and sorrow alike in gratitude.

Time's passage shall not measure

your course, nor the whirling of Earths pause

your vessel. Your gifts bestowed

upon the Source shall mark the rhythm

of your soul's eternal flight.

© 2016 Lily's Verse

Lilium Candidum

Image: NIGHT IN THE FOREST

Source: www.pinterest.com

Artist: William Louis Sonntag

FLAME III

It was not the clock that

claimed your breath, 

mother,

though its relentless ticking

closed as a vise

around your throat.

No spring-driven beat could

silence the echo

of Life's pulse, nor a synthetic

clangour efface 

the immortal poesis

of an ever present past.

Death's talons could not mar

the face of tomorrow

that shines amid those 

whose sole endeavour is to

appease an emptiness

that holds illusions of meaning

and rhythm,

a Reality that scars their flesh 

and steals their years,

the hours they choose to fill

or kill with shadows

and hollow sounds.

Earth's palette is my claviature,

the moonflower's breath

my metronome, for therein

dwells Time's essence.

My dreams shall not lie 

stifled, concealed, 

beneath dried blooms 

in a book of moments.

No, they are indiscernible from

woodland and ocean,

dawn and twilight,

from Nature's very heartbeat.

Hopeful utterances, 

the pace of my thoughts,

the wing beats of my soul,

these shall measure my path.

My flame shall strike

discordant chimes in the vault

of your false temple.

© 2016 Lily's Verse

Lilium Candidum

Image source: www.pinterest.com

Artist: Vladimir Kush