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

 

FOR NAMJOON

TREES

 

Pillars of Earth who birth the air

and bear up the sky,

I seek my truths

amid your branches like arms

and leaves like whispers

in this space for quiet blessings

that renews bloodless days

into green litanies.

Lead me to my roots, to the Root,

Sages of the ages anchored

to our Mother’s heartbeat!

I cleave to your timeless wisdom

as bark to sapwood,

for you hold primordial knowledge

of finite and eternal Flow,

the songs of winds and cascades,

the roar and susurrus of Life’s River.

You glitter and gleam

as lute or harp strings,

melding your tunes with birdsong,

silvering and gilding

the air with the balm of elemental

rhythms that heal and restore.

In you, Seasons rejoice and weep,

thrive and perish,

looking farther than they could see,

reaching through your limbs

into the Immortal Mind,

as though to glean some arcane craft

of stars’ cosmogyral peregrination.

I would attain a higher vision,

Keepers of the Universe’s enchiridion,

beyond the wall and veneer

of man’s world, past beaten paths and

weightless words that steal

moments from death and clad such

in colours of life.

I would merge with your core,

resonate with your rings that cantillate

Time’s opuses,

joining with your spirit to learn

my strength in stillness,

for you unite the realms within,

enfolding my Self in your heartwood.

In your eyes, the radiance

of clouds and rills entwines into spells

of illumination, inspiriting me,

that I may weather my storms with

your ancient assuredness.

I would stand unyielding as you through

raging tempests

and lowered heavens, abscising all that

trammels my soul

or no more serves my course.

Twilight slips through your spires

like violet sand through

an aery hourglass; in this liminal instant,

our axes align,

an unbidden grace that enjoins me

to choose a Destiny.

A pearly blaze glides over your canopies

as mists raise the hilltops

and ivorine rays sweep the waters.

I breathe deeper, as you commence

gathering all the splendour of the light

in your darkly verdant scriptorium.

I shall rest in the knowing and peace

of my true heart,

my pulse my only clock and

measure of living.

 

© 2021 Lilium Candidum

Lily’s Verse

Image: twitter.com  (@BigHitEnt)

FOR NAMJOON

PRINCIPIUM

 

A Strand sought you; longing for kin

seized a Cosmic Filament,

drawing its fragment to a Beginning

and Fundament.

In you, it found a voice, met echoes

of Time and Tides,

of meaning and epiphany it yearned

to weave into Life's plane.

Each word you speak and pen spells

an iteration of Living,

even as the light of false convictions

clamours its darkness

through a world unmoored from the

spirit’s nutriment.

Doubt and terror unmake life breath

by waning breath;

yet you follow the jagged Star,

forsaking flower-paths for a cliff face,

for a passage along

ragged rocks through stony deserts,

tranquil in the certitude

of abiding blossoming within,

these gardens a love that enfolds

leafed and barren branches

alike waters and suns into lushness.

Stories thrive in its heart

along a pulsing Thread of indigo Fire

where Eye and Vision embrace,

where you dream Knowing into Being

that paints Tomorrow within

a mute poem of parched lines etched

against the cold blue camber

of Winter skies,

for the truths of place lie in spaces

consecrated to Silence,

in borderlands nor latent nor manifest.

Import shall meet its voice

in another age, in another tongue,

limned so long as Wonder

splits silver-white souls into rainbows

and Earth embraces the shadow

of plumes rising from its last Pyre.

 

© 2020 Lilium candidum

Lily’s Verse

Image: twitter.com (@BigHitEnt)

SPRING DAY

I returned home a stranger to strangers;

my tongue turned with insatiate tides,

my words dissolved into the briny infinity

that claimed your breath,

these lightless depths I took unto myself

that scoured from within

into un-living. An ocean of clouds surges

still in my eyes with ghost flames

and ragged rainbows, a maelstrom destiny

burned onto our maps.

A mere mote renamed existence,

jolted from Blossom to unseen Blossom

past the whirligig of time

with a hollow in its heart dense, immense,

alive as a cluster of colliding universes.

I listed and lurched through

waking dreams, through light and voids

it left for me to fill

with meaning I could no longer find,

for my soul sailed waves

of dying air and waning pulse.

 

I swallowed the sun and devoured the stars,

yet the dark hunger in my cells

remains unstill, echoing with footsteps

and voices from a realm whose

miles and bounds I do not know,

though I lingered long at its invisible doors.

I do not remember whence

my path tended this Blossom or what forces

flutter as fragile pennants

in my trembling hands, merely that they

were sparged with tears

before they met the half-light’s dew.

I walk along the shore

to your eternity, measuring each pace

as though fulfilling an ancient rite

of divination to learn our fate.

“Yesterday is blind; tomorrow’s woods bloom

sparser.” My senses strain to capture

some lost arcanum.

Yet what could I perceive? I, a human sliver,

the past’s future

and the future’s past, whose vision could

no more tell dapples from blots,

now stand before you or your memory amid a

vastness that amplifies our un-being,

yet I could not tell who is the more absent.

 

You remain unmoving, suspended in a Season

by petals at the waters’ edge.

What would you have me learn, you who glow

as an Angel whose name and truth

alone endure? Do you weary of my sorrow?

Does my spirit’s surrender stale?

You lift your gaze into the warming Blue

in wonder and supplication,

welcoming a sunlit ribbon of seagulls on wing.

Yes, I must image us anew

as mirror and reflection,

parted awhile, though never apart.

My arms stutter a cry, the “Stay!” my lips dare

not shape, as you merge

into brightening April’s sunshine page.

I shall write you into every cherry spirant and

blossom note, for I now pledge to sing

lost flowers into Spring.

 

© 2021 Lilium Candidum

Lily’s Verse

Image 1: twitter.com (via @ItalianARMY_BTS)

Image 2: pinterest.com (Credit to original artist @odettemh)

 OAK MOON

 

Her Voice rang as a half-uttered spell

along the brume-haunted river,

freezing the ink in my well,

staying my bedevilled fingers

in mid-phrase.

A weaver of tales journeyed forth

to the place of long shadows

and quieter winds where ancient magic

lingers and the lonely capstone sings.

An unstruck Drum sounded

over snowy barrows past the wizened

henge into where the

Cold Moon glinted in the arms

of a skeleton Ash haloed in darkling flint,

more shade than shape,

yet glowing fuller, a richer endowment

of keener purpose than Summer’s

urgent verdant fury.

Amid such barren beauty as wounds

the heart and mists the eye,

where ghost oaks gather at Time’s own

seasonless Portal,

Presence dimmed, displacing the Soul

as though giving it anew

unto the Circle from Eternity’s ocean

or on the threshold of a new Order

yet unveiled to Being.

A node upon the path ablaze with ice

and pearl called to the blood

that knows a primal space

of certain unknowing and euphoric doubt

where the breathless air revels

in yearning for stories implied and

verges half-perceived.

Every cell opens in sublime awe

to the light or darkness of the Moment;

Life does not ask whence

or whither, but seeks forgotten echoes

within folds and between layers

of the Land’s memories,

the keepers of the Key to the pulse

of our natal Moment

that sates the Spirit with questions

as it communes with unseen tides beneath

a Sky that hangs

as a meditation on staves.

In the centremost atom 

of blessed Lostness, I shall grow

beyond the sureness and succour 

of my roots and branches

till I feel stars thrum in my core.

 

© 2021 Lilium Candidum

Lily’s Verse

 

Image: www.pinterest.com

 

FOR NAMJOON

PEBBLE

 

You call me to bend to the ground,

to where you fell as light

slowed to rest upon a cosmic blink,

when a twinkling hung

between you and the nascent Moon.

I pause by whispering waters

upon the forest trail to the verdant

cathedral that is my agonist’s refuge,

yielding to your gentle gravity

and soundness, as untruths crumble

around their artificers

who chronicle their ascendancy

in numbers and impedimenta.

I reach for the dust whence I came

for an even Moment,

for you who were born from the fire

of the ocean floor,

for a fathomless tome of Earth’s

memories in her ancient Library.

I cradle you, an Aeon of Tales, in my

unlearned palm, a Guide

the rage and benevolence of currents

sheared and shaped

into discernment, incising Way and

Waiving into sage smoothness.

You gaze into the heart of the woods,

glean the sparkle and darkness

of celestial orbs,

attend the faith of the Oracle Tree.

Do you meet butterflies’ caresses and

serpents’ scales with equal joy;

greet the brigand’s trampling and the

hermit’s prayerful tread alike

with serene acquiescence? You merge

mirthful tears and broken;

drink deep of Sun’s warmth and Winds’

coolness, clad now in loam,

then, in rain; soothe hands and essence

of all who crave your solace.

The scholar delves as I for your journey

and meaning; yet I come to seek

your still forbearance, that I may root

as you in our Mother’s wisdom.

I am a mere sojourner in your realm

of constancy and consequence;

yet you confer a belonging no mortal kin

of blood or soul could impart,

for you prevail as an immortal Mind;

as a shining numeral upon the Universe’s

clock face, alive with history,

changeless, timeless, amid evanescing

Life and Death, humble,

yet immense as Rock and Mountain.

Stories converge in your ageless laminae;

you enounce their light

in the silent tongue of the Prophet who

lives the Path. I imbibe your

wordless emanations, such awakening an

eternal Truth in my eyes and soul:

All are One.

© 2020 Lilium Candidum

Lily’s Verse

Image: twitter.com

FOR TAEHYUNG

INSCENDENCE

 

A Voice like snowflakes bearing starlight

and violet Dusks glancing

the winding river embosoms the Dawn.

Your Song is the boat in the

gloaming with sails of spangled plumes

and oars of moonlit dreams,

a cold Perfume that enfolds and warms

in shades of Fire and Ice.

You take Winter’s light for your canvas

and an icicle for your brush;

yet you sing us the Flowers and Flowing

and a recondite Whiteness,

that mystical sum of colours raying the

peace of a haven of clouds

that engulfs the Soul

as consciousness receives Spirit.

Man and Child angle for diamond orblets

in fluent crystal, possessing each

with a breath or thought,

impressing reflections into tides merging

time, space and silence

to ward their profoundest musings.

Your verse bespells and stirs;

Incertitude shines as a lamp in deepest

recesses of my frozen Lake,

thawing the Blue, raising me into Day

even as you descend

into frigid grey torrents to retrieve

lost echoes of a hapax logomenon with such

depth of ear as the prophets praise.

An Axiom of cerulean domes your world,

an eternal silver Mystery

marks its pinnacle; you poetise your course

to its heart, for you know Life as

Passer of Destiny’s design, a Prism whose

memory alone lives, endures.

Silted Shadows yield many-hued Blossoms;

promises of Pardon await

in the tribunal of Conscience; the Task shall

be restored to its sovereign plane.

A bird on a blue wing

hunts a Moment of Spring across the Sky,

as you walk the Passage to Meaning

at Frost’s edge.

The Season speaks a blessing into your Eye,

that you may somewhen

follow the arc of a kaleidoscope of butterflies,

a fleeting, floating mosaic,

to the eternal Summer of the Child

a Rainbow enwombs.

 

© 2020 Lilium Candidum

Lily’s Verse

Image: twitter.com