CATHERINE

Does your gaze probe depths your heart

alone knows? Does it trace

the damask roses upon the velvet rug?

Your eyes wear an uncertain light,

as though seeking a name for your hope,

melding the ephemeral

with the ineffable into a disquieting epistle

of blood, history and vision.

You stand before a master immortaliser,

conspicuous yet insubstantial,

resigned to this vacant hour, a pause

undesired yet imposed,

not the glutting respite you would greet.

Autumn’s leaf-drunk rays dapple your locks,  

a fleeting reprieve of amber-green

from reconciling shadows with darkness,

as you await your labours.

Blessed labours, for within their bounds,

you are alchemist and artificer,

in this world but not of it, for you feel and

speak unperceived; with your task

you breathe as one, hands and senses

surrendering to scents and hues,

buffing and shining a bounty of grapes and

plums, setting cabochon clusters

of fragrant amethyst and garnet into gilded

bowls with the faithful craft

of the King’s jeweller.

An unsung song weighs heavy in your throat, 

as you hurry past a laughing fount

to the rosarium beneath a sky where clouds

were once ships of dreams,

now transformed into a solace of angels

suspended in prayer. Into a bower of saffron

and ochre you stumble, as a grain of gold

settles upon your eyelash,

parting the dark. A new force colours

your gait, the blood-deep rhythm of the tribe

that dons nature’s pigments and sings

with the winds. Eve walks among late roses,

she, who braved the elements fell-clad

and unshod with earth between her toes.

Her footsteps sweep and echo across the ages

as she goes to compose floral poesis,

slowing to curve around a stray citrine shoot

glistening as a lost gem

through a crack in the paving. A smile ghosts

across her face, this witness

to a silent mutiny, for a moment of living won,

a moment returned to life.

Her own voice calls from across a world to

brighter grief, to a fire that is

the promise of home, of the spirit’s dwelling.

© 2020 Lilium candidum

Lily’s Verse

Image: Portrait of an African woman Catherine

Artist: Albrecht Dürer

Source: www.wikiart.org

FELL

Silence falls upon a cup,

slower than the sunset,

denser than night.

The clock ticks quieter,

its hands shaping

the unborn in the unstill

space into tomorrow’s

peace.

The fire in the grate

resiles from cowering,

solacing corners gravid

with blear echoes,

warming flagstones worn

and scarred by

fell boots that ground dust

and spirits in a soundless

rite of passage.

Knouts of tallowed leather,
once tall and proud,

now lie lodged beside

their liege lord,
the felled by the fallen.

Alone I weep waxen drops

in the transfigured air.

Light drapes its way over

garden and hedge

into a shadowed lane.

The gloaming curls into

a smokeless pipe,

as a waft smooths a page

darkness owns.

At dawn, doves shall return.

© 2020 Lilium Candidum

Lily’s Verse

Image: MAN IN A BOWLER HAT

Source: wikiart.org

Artist: René Magritte 

FOR YOONGI

INTRO: NEVERMIND

"I carved you even as you made me;

I could not discern your vector

nor myself on your reaches, merely

the goals of steps and end;

I faded into your thorns and roses,

your marks and milestones -

I would not rob my purpose

of breath or vision."

"Your absence tinges my memories,

as I reminisce, crown in hand,

on tender years that carried me

through reproof and scorn.

Misfortune bent me to its will,

yet resolve lent my spirit

spine and vigour."

Yes, I took that leap of faith into

a new unknown, safe in the

knowledge that I would harness

the currents and touch the skies

or plummet to my fate

in equal glory. Yes, I rose and fell,

seizing tears and smiles alike.

You, of a world that nurses its ire and

dread, painting me small, broken

and blighted, could your words

curb my heart? Could they wing

the angels of my conviction?

I stand before you, inspired, whole,

as your Book lies unopened and

your dreams gather dust.

You, whose future mourns the decay

of your past, I look now upon

your derision with eyes set higher,

that have seen farther

and more profoundly than my days,

even through your blind

changelessness to your abiding

sense of futility.

And I hurtle still toward my destiny,

toward struggles and endeavours,

questing after light and darkness.

What is defeat to youth

but a passing sky?

#SonOfMyHeart

© 2020 Lilium Candidum

Lily’s Verse

Image 1: www.twitter.com

Image 2: commons.wikimedia.org

FOR YOONGI

FIRST LOVE

Little hands wafting the pureness

of childhood play,

the sweetness of tangerines,

the trust of the everyday,

to their unlearned touch,

your ebony and ivory intoned

Love itself.

You laid claim to my heart, as it

hopped a staccato path

over your byway of blessings in

white and black,

tones of honey and amber

marking the contours of dreams

and waking hours alike.

Through blooming years I grew,

unmindful of your mahogany

tinting my vision,

of the softness and spaces of your

keys and clefts imprinting

my fingers, of your sounds of

felt-kissed steel curling as velvet

clefs into my ears.

Time cast its layers on your lustre,

as new adventures called.

We glided through seasons -

allegro and largo, piano and forte -

parted, though never apart,

for we had composed a light that

circled us across miles and minutes.

Did I cease thinking of you or did I

neglect to remember you?

Fortune ordained my return to your

welcoming warmth, to the keeper of

my unblemished joy,

to the one who held my brightest,

most vital theme.

With laughter and weeping, we

melodised and harmonised

through days of unknowing and

nights of despair.

In your tranquil aspect, I sought

my wholeness, as an uncalm world

mirrored my brokenness.

You chronicled victory and defeat,

as I yielded to the hammers of Fate,

penning your manuscript of my

wayward course, conferring symbols

on every card I was dealt,

gathering flowers that withered

on my vision’s bough.

We shall endure, truest companion

of my soul’s seeking,

through my journey’s every zenith

and nadir, through winters I am

too weary to muster meandering

vignettes and notes,

till Life’s metronome beats no more,

my constant star in every darkness.

#SonOfMyHeart

© 2020 Lilium Candidum

Lily’s Verse

Image: www.twitter.com

Image 2: commons.wikimedia.org

FOR YOONGI

INTERLUDE: SHADOW

Follow the faraway Herald’s mellow silver,

that clarion call to a higher war,

to the fount of timeless wonder and vision

that girds your void.

Seek respite from this exhausting radiance,

flawed, blemished, strident,

in a blessed death of story, in the shadow

that is your inmost flame’s  

immensest sustenance.

What recourse remains when the cherished

turns treacherous;

when neither inscape nor import

grip the senses; when your own name is a

strange literation in an opulent prison

its colours and eminence fashioned?

Trace a river of soundlessness to a lost song

within deepest silences.

Black, blackening, blackened, the burgeoning

darkness branches around you like vines.

Its thorns lance flesh and soul alike,

this sacred blood-letting a prelude to baptism

in your own spirit’s flow.

Oaths of and to Light you inscribe in its Absence,

the memory of distant discarnate strains

your only beacon.

In the mute discord of cavernous depths,

you find melodies, harmonies between its frozen

intervals and overtones.

A White Fire within you grows, glows, your saint,

your self that speaks the strength of Gold

and knows the lure of the gilded.

Dark and Light guide the selfsame mission,

the bright journey you desired.

Your heart beats its assent.

Amen. Amen. Amen.

#SonOfMyHeart

© 2020 Lilium Candidum

Lily’s Verse

Image: www.twitter.com

@bts_bighit

Images 2 & 3: commons.wikimedia.org

FOR YOONGI

THE LAST

It is a cage of sinews and clock

ever on the cusp of a beginning,

on the verge of an ending.

It is the keeper of your Destiny

even as your vision crumbles.

Will or thought could not unwrite

its Rhythm; you know its Music

as it echoes through your form,

but you could not possess its

depths and breadths.

Would that you could see

the numinous Light in your eyes

brimming Love born of a

mystical melding of struggle and

skill. Your course was laid

as cartographer of Souls,

as chronicler of its Seasons.

Your pain beats and breathes

as you emerge

from a sunless haven,

speaking words I no longer have.

Yes, I disavowed

Question and Answer.

Metaphors and metamorphoses

have forsaken me.

And you ask if I could stifle

the eyeless stranger in my mirror?

Your chords rain blue gold,

a mosaic of Time and skies

piercing the shell I have worn too

long like an ornament.

You wound me like a broken God;

your anguish storms and glowers.

Yet, triumph is the whispered core

of your song, the tyranny

you swallowed forging its spine.

How intricately you plot awakenings!

I hold your bequest to me,

an indigo strand darkly bright,

a treasure of and for the ages.

On its gentle strength, I now string

moments and memories,

visions and words seeking to

constellate on tomorrow’s pages

in an act of truest redamancy.

#SonOfMyHeart

© 2020 Lilium candidum

Lily’s Verse

Image 1: www.twitter.com

Image 2: commons.wikimedia.org

FOR YOONGI

SO FAR AWAY

I hear a Heart beat a dream,

as I cleave to Autumn’s rising.

Hints of 'maybe', 'could be'

and 'ought to' leaven a Season

I neither know nor see,

one I yearned for without me,

into which I now reach with

hands surer than ever before

toward a lambent Core, a glow

of Source and silent Knowing.

I seek to fade into gentle flowing,

far from the fear that wove

my veins, bartering my blood

for doubt and loathing

that wrenched me out of hope

and living, for that which sparked

Beginning leaned into thwarted

spaces and sere, into the vise

of ambiguity that is my Tartarus,

my cold ledge of unreckoning.

A leaf unfurls in Autumn’s arms;

my soul knows the faraway light

your eyes shine, the bright womb

that would recast its dim expanse.

This blessing, I greet with trust

and abandon; redeeming song;

meaning in the stillness between;

words blossoming and withering

on the tree of Life; a Universe

of paths, truths and falls.

Your heart beats a dream,

our dream,

it leads me back to mine.

#SonOfMyHeart

© 2020 Lilium Candidum

Lily's Verse

Images: commons.wikimedia.org