Monday, November 06, 2006

Farewell, These Ancient Thrones

I bid this solitude, this place where
shadows have been my companions,
where the great and enclosed empty
spaces echo with orphaned thoughts
and years of dust accumulate on
every upturned space, every face
in the spanning caryatid against
the horizons of past and future---

I bid all this, my kingdom of unfinished
deeds and dreaming dark

Goodbye

And in the old ways of speaking,
perhaps God Be With Thee is
appropriate, because the scales
have fallen from my eyes,
the dust blown clear of my
flesh, all the ancient, unknown
reaches of these castles consumed
in the cleansing fires, and

I step, new-made and without
artifice, into the universe at last.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

A metamorphosis. An ascension. This seems to me an ethereal odyssey, a renewal. I will read it again and again and probably acquire other impressions along the way.

MB said...

Wow. Yes, I'd agree with you that you changed tone with this one. A fresh opportunity, a new beginning while saying a (perhaps tender) goodby to the old ways, is how it comes across. It suggests the question, "What's next?"

Anonymous said...

Hiya, handsome! I hope you had a good trip home from World Fantasy. It was most excellent meeting you, and Paul sent me some pix of the whole thing.
I am not ready to comment on your poetry yet, must take time to read more of it. However, here's my first impression: I've never met anyone who hides it better. Heh, what I mean is, mostly when you meet a person who's capable of producing sentences like this, they are a bit garrulous. Maybe long-winded is the word I want? Anyways, you are not like that, Mr. Monounsaturated-Fats-wouldn't-melt-in-my-oral-cavity. Now I've seen some of what you were hiding under that beard, dude, I like you more than ever.

Anonymous said...

Hah, oh, sorry about that! I am new to this whole blog thing. It's me, Rachel, we met at World Fantasy!! I did not mean to be all anonymous and stalker-ish. Good thing JJA is not here to record my moment of ignominy.

M. Shahin said...

"I bid all this, my kingdom of unfinished
deeds and dreaming dark

Goodbye"

What a goodbye it is...and I can feel the moment here very well. I'm thinking that someone is saying goodbye to life, as they are dying.
I know you might have meant something else, and there could be several other things between the lines, but this is what I'm reading so far.

"I step, new-made and without
artifice, into the universe at last."

A stunning abandonment and then entrance into the real. I like the transformations throughout, and beautifully crafted words to take us into this stepping into the universe at last.

Some of your best work!

Anonymous said...

For some reason I love the thought of an "upturned space". While this one contains elements of the old, it entirely new in spirit. Really nice. Thanks.

Patrick M. Tracy said...

Bobby,

Glad to see you back! It is an ascension of sorts, at least to a slightly higher realm of the mundane world...

MB,

What's next--that's a great question. I think we always need to ask that one, and I applaud your ability to come up with that unstated predicate to my poem. We shall see. I'm in hopes that it will be something great!

Rachel,

Great to hear from you! I loved our time at World Fantasy. It was quite a weekend, and I'm already signed up for the con next year. I wasn't aware that I'd "played it so cool" about my writing, but I suppose that I may have. I try not to beat people about the head and shoulders with the "guess what I've been doing" routine. Anyway, hope to see you back here so that we can correspond more. I'll be posting some info about other sites I'm in the process of building. At some point, I'll have a little nest of blogs and websites over in this corner of the web! Again, thanks for writing in!

m. shahin,

I'm honored that you liked this one so much. I felt an overwhelming exuberance at the time I was writing this one (and still feel the residuals), so it is somewhat different in tone to my brooding pieces of late. Thank you for coming by once again.

Swiftboat,

Well, I don't know if Newtonian physics would agree with "upturned space", but I liked the sound and connotation of it. Thanks for coming by. Oh, and congrats on winning that race in Maine! It seems your boat truly is swift, eh?

Anonymous said...

A beautiful and uplifting poem :) We are reborn every day, and some days are better than others.

Peace and Many Blessings!

iamnasra said...

Im glad that M.Shahin have mentioned your blog and here Im getting to read more of your works..Thank you

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