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Lord of Snow and Rain |
Lord of Snow and Rain: Last Busker of Dublin
“Every life is in many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love. But always meeting ourselves. ― James Joyce, Ulysses
The night has fallen..street-lights appear... how above the roar of the city will they hear?
Words reach out to those in the swarming like a balancing fisherman with his spear...
The world is marched to a beat, not of the heart's bloodchant
but of a hunger and need-driven feet... The dreams of the bard obsolete...hunger for things
and dancing on popular will's strings...music lend me thy dark wings...
His breath steams like a smoking gun in the chill air as the echoes of the song trail off...
not a cd sold words hauntingly linger like an old warrior's wounds throbbing in the cold...
He sings other words to the herds... till they become his own... the words of bards the finger's that caressed the harp now bone... He plays for the coins of the visitors from across the sea... praise-singer of the urban world, who needs a tree? He sings of 1798 as processions of shadow warrior pass phantasmally...
He closes his eyes as shadows dance to old songs... rebels who fought without a chance...
He feels as gradually unseen as statues of great men that have become invisible while the living toast
another land's queen...
singing for a muse that seemed to have strayed from a silver screen...
Eyes open like one startled from nightmare in the hours before the light... fluttering eyes like night-blooming roses petals nourished by moonlight... like a heart that answers to the brightness of one smile alone... the music takes a darker tone... A crowd has gathered he senses?... but it is merely the reflexes of a once humbled swordsman who shadow-fences...
What words have I
for that replayed scene...?
A moment of time that knew no reason or rhyme...
now condemned to haunt the street downcast eyes open to concrete... He knew not of the fallen rain
that hailed his song... as if the night had wept for an ancient wrong...
The music had taken him away... to that day... "It's cold the night seems" to urge caringly
come back to your place and rest... use your strength as a nomad rations water... sparingly..."
No... one more mirage in the painted desert of lights... where tourists ask me "how many miles"
and people want to be unseen as themselves but seen for favourite styles...
... And humanity stands like a soloist at a crossroads independent of the movements
of bodies swayed by a statesman that is great for a good-talker like shadows distancing themselves from the walker...
One like a ghost bound to chains bearing vigil in the fall of many night's rains... three more songs to touch hearts..three more ghosts await to visit on Christmas eve... time for enough to eat passes like sand through a sieve..The wind keens like a banshee impatient after more soul to grieve..stubbornly clinging to breath... "one more song... one more song"... one coin more to be cast from the throng...? Like the ghost of Christmas present that ages with the night... The song's stretch further like a shadow-boxer in another round with the dark ghosts of the light...
The people of the city insulate themselves with loud music, drink and night club... but he stands
like a bard of an exiled house... playing a anthem like a warrior's last breath... ready for a game of cat and mouse...
Ancient fights exchange props as he sings their words... a changing of the guard for the soul of the city and streets of herds...
History's fights, the conjured ghosts of his nights...
He played the notes and sang the songs as if heir entrusted to a promethean fire...
a somnambulist's walk in aftermath of battle... as if speaking wordlessly against the blare of horn and screech of tire...
Like a dance with the belle of one's dreams where one doesn't feel the floor... one last song of the night...
the ghosts of the street heard above the fading echoes of passerby's feet chant... "one more!"
"one more!" his sigh like waves to a distant shore... like a selkie's love song to a muse on a mortal shore...
dark... deep... to a soul that cannot distinguish death from sleep in the ghost's consciousness that rises
to answer to the moon he hears and feels the ancient's tune illuminating the streets like an earthbound moon...
Revelers flushed with an age of immortality's sense of power... raise a mocking toast to the busker that midnight witching hour... The jester's contempt for the knight but the shadow cannot exist without the light...
But he has gone..home? Where was he...? Gone like a phantom pain of a love lost's kiss...
a ghost then all long?... had he passed like a lost moment of defiance like a warrior hidden protectively by a king's men in the haunted mist?
The smile faded over it's glass... he knew then why one sang in the street and
the fallen glass shattered for the curse was traded... he understood like a punch what mattered...
copyright NA
Greg
Patrick |
