FOR TAEHYUNG

THE BOY IN THE SUBWAY

 

He settled into his seat like music into a soul,

seeming like Daphnis fled from a canvas…

..or David slid from the Master’s block.

 

Silver-blue beams moulded themselves around

his graceful self-possession,

smoothing his skin, tinting it electrum,

his cheeks glowing the faintest incarnadine,

the hue that blooms in the heart of white roses.

 

His mien shone the strength of stars, his gaze,

the tenderness of fresh Spring grass,

calling to mind that meeting place

of unremembered legends for Beauty and Spirit

where swans kept their song

and night jasmine their perfume.

 

Such quiet wonder and promise they rayed,

his youthful orbs vivid

as the flames in Earth’s core, limpid as the ice

of bygone ages! Were such treasures

held now with certain serenity

retrieved from the darkest depths?

Was he merely eye-minded, sensible of every

inspiration, the brush of his breath

translating time and life onto his mind’s vault?

 

The light burned within, for he wore the silence

of the Moon and Infinity on high.

Before his vision’s Sun, the hour grew wide;

the tides beneath his skin called

to the poem in every moment and Night’s spark

in Day’s death throes.

His very aspect was abloom in and with Creation,

this explorer of essence and flow,

for it was his spirit’s tongue.

 

Was he a mystic flâneur of obscured soulscapes,

of our inmost cities milling with

spurned multitudes and cleaved identities

wandering spaces seething with dying constructs,

walking streets we pave with phantasms

of paths and lives long since discarded?

 

He took all in with tranquil delectation - the collage

of whispers, murmurs, clatters and ringtones

was wine in his glass;

people, objects and colours were regarded

like some enchanted parade,

his head inclined as though drawn away

from the terrene to the suprasensible to gather all

that hovered unsaid, unheard, unveiled,

within the bounds of moving spacetime.

 

I saw a boy in the subway, a child and man whose

Art was his blood, one who had ensouled his Fate.

 

© 2021 Lilium Candidum

Lily’s Verse

Image: twitter.com