“Perhaps Dawn Is Lovelier Than Twilight, Allusive Of The Light That Arises From Darkness, The Peaceful

𝙼𝚊𝚢 𝟸𝟾, 𝟷𝟿𝟷𝟶
 𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝙳𝚒𝚊𝚛𝚒𝚎𝚜 𝙾𝚏 𝙵𝚛𝚊𝚗𝚣 𝙺𝚊𝚏𝚔𝚊, 𝟷𝟿𝟷𝟶-𝟷𝟿𝟷𝟹

think it's a deep consolation to know that spiders dream, that monkeys tease predators, that dolphins have accents, that lions can be scared silly by a lone mongoose, that otters hold hands, and ants bury their dead. that there isn't their life and our life. nor your life and my life. that it's just one teetering and endless thread and all of us, all of us, are entangled w it as deep as entanglement goes. v neat i think.

It was a cool and breezy evening. Just the kind of weather you hope for picnics but never get. “I am going out on a walk”, I declared, springing up with an unanticipated swiftness from the depths of an easy chair where I had been perusing ‘The picture of Dorian gray’. “Where to ?” He casually questioned me. A mischievous smile crept over my face, “To rediscover a path to fairyland” I said. “Do you wish to join me?”

A quizzical look came over his face, yet in the depths of those dark eyes I noticed a spark of recognition. He silently closed his absurdly large volume of ‘the history of great poets’ and reached for his hat, “Oh,never mind hats!” I exclaimed, “The elves don’t care for your exaggerated accessories”. Still he remained mute, acquiescing to my impulsive demand. “Where is this forgotten path you speak of ?” was the first enquiry made, after rambling on for the better part of an hour. I, who had drifted off to a remote and inaccessible part of my imagination, was jerked backed to earth by this and answered, “Just a little while away. Strange, how time can diminish your sense of distance in such a fashion”. He knit his brows together in agreement and put his hands in his pockets. We wandered on, passing old fields whose sight brought a rush of nostalgia for the days of the past, when worries were few and sorrow unheard of. I stopped at a creek, christened ‘Troll falls‘ by some old phantoms, as familiar to me as myself. Standing there in hope of meeting them again, I fancied that I could see a sharp glistening of wings behind the rocks. Wondering if my quest had so easily come to an end, I tried to peer over the broad stone to see if I could coax them to grace me with a full vision. While engaged in this manner, I lost my footing on the slippery moss and would have fallen into the creek head first if he hadn’t happened to get hold of my sash and pull me back.

“Thank-you”, I said.

“What on earth were you leaning so far into the stream for?”

“I thought I saw some of the fair folk behind that ridge”

So far he had been relatively calm, but at the mention of the fair folk, his face morphed into a strange expression. “The fairy folk you speak of don’t really exist. You know that, don’t you?”. I was rather taken aback by this sudden statement and scanned my surroundings quickly to make sure that we were alone. The fair folk a myth!

“Why do you look at me like that? Your eyes are fixed upon my countenance, what do you try to read there?”

“No”, I slowly said, “I was wondering.”

“About what?”

“If you had lost the way to fairyland and forgotten it.”

He frowned.

“There are two kinds of people who don’t recognise fairyland when they see it” I continued, after a slight pause. “The ones who never knew it, the souls who belong to the world in every sense of the word. And there is another kind, the people who knew the faerie place at one point in time, when their soul was untainted by the crudeness of the world, their vision not stained with its ugliness. When their spirit had not been crushed by the repeated injustice and unfairness which is a part of every creature’s portion in life. When you are born, the goblins tie the key to your land on heaven onto an invisible string around your neck, you never realise what it means to you until one day the string breaks, and you have to search for the key. When at last you find it, you stow it away in the stack where you keep your most prized possessions. It slowly starts to rust over the years, and there will come a time when you are left with only a few indented pieces of rusted iron in your hands. Some vainly try to restore it. Some become resigned to the fact that the door is henceforth barred to them. A very few understand that the door would still open, even without the key, for the true power to open it lies in their hearts, and it mattered little if the key was iron or stone. For what faery land truly represents is the wisdom of humanity. The ability to dream without restraint, decipher the truth which lies below vain frills of delusion. I was wondering, if you were one of those who disguised their despair under resignation and had gradually become so ingrained in the world’s ways, that they retained no memory of what is pure and true.”

All this while he was standing with his face turned from me, but I could see he was getting caught up in my rambling.

“If so, you needn’t turn away, the gnomes never forget their playmates. And here is a damned circle of toadstools in the grass, will you step in, knowing that for each minute in it a year passes? Will you leave everything you know and join their dance, for eternity?”

“See the world melt around you,” I went on, losing track of what I was uttering as I gazed at the horizon. “your fine distinctions between the real and false disappear, you find yourself surrounded and entrapped by ghosts, spirits and animated phantoms. And before long, you will find that you are one of them”. At this he shuddered, yet not a word left him.

I was silent for a while, faintly aware of the glow of the sunset sky and the sound of crickets chirping.

A few minutes or eons later, the sound of the old bell at the townhouse reminded me that it was past seven, and it was time to head homeward. As we passed the elm tree, he stopped and looked up at the sky, and so did I. Bellatrix of the Orion, my favourite star, shone especially brightly that night. I stared at the constellations, remembering an old poem from somewhere,

“ They say nothing is wasted,

either that,

or it all is. “

And so ended the affair of the evening stroll.

Frosted glass between rain and life

I run my hand through the same old withered branches,

Drenched in the same old tired rain,

Far away the sunset harbours the lost gold of

Odysseys gone by, and if the wind were to hide

Within it some unremembered glow from the land

Of unknown secrets, the evening will gently

Whisk away the covers of the coquette,

And reveal to us a maiden under the bent willow,

Sweet as the apples from the orchards where our dreams

Were buried. She will beckon for the children

To gather around the fire and tell them the story

Of Zerah and Zulamith, whilst we twist the

Slender branches of the cherry tree into a throne

Fit for the brides of heaven to recline on,

Place at the altar a wreath of dead roses,

And hope that the silent fragrance borne to the shore

Is enough for the sea to give up the child

She drew to her heart in death’s storm.

…

And dare I tag anyone? @pollosky-in-blue perhaps you’ll like the story?

Does anyone else have this strange compulsion to try and - in a sense - store everything you read that moves you, everything you write, as though trying to piece together a cohesive person? almost as if the pieces you’ve collected of yourself could somehow make up for all the life you leave unlived ?

🌼 poems that held my hand in may 🌼

Nocturne, Li-Young Lee

Your Name, Vahan Tekeyan

Sonnets to Orpheus 2;29, Rainer Maria Rilke

I stopped going to therapy, Clementine von Radics

Miyazaki Bloom, Nina Mingya Powles  

The Quiet Machine, Ada Limón

When we two parted, Lord Byron

Fragment, Amy Lowell

The Want of You, Angelina Weld Grimké

When Did It Happen?, Mary Oliver

Alone, Sara Teasdale

Peace XVIII, Khalil Gibran

She tightened her hold of the hand dearest to her and uttered in a tone of quiet contempt, ”No rose shall e’er bloom over my grave, god forbid!”

“And you wonder why the eternally vague intentions of mortals morph into creatures as alluring. Will thou not cast away thy pretence lady?” Enquired back the night. The song of the Cicadas rung as soft as church bells through the veil of silence that clung to the earth, among which lay the echoes of unheard laughter and the tears of unseen eyes. Thought held in open hands slipped away, away into the river of time, into the sweetness of lost memory. Wherein is the difference? Futile words and futile life clasp hands/together to form sculptures of forsaken gods on earth and heaven, they can but stretch their hands out and sob at the foot of the aspen poplar and look in terror at its shuddering leaves as it pierces their hearts with the arrow of ichor, the mortal blood was said to be poisoned from that day on, for the indifference of the deity was a luxury ill afforded by the child lying under the sparkling night sky beset with a gentle gray drift, behind which lays life, held off, locked up. Always with the promise of far away, the far away that is permanently entrenched in the distance/the fragrance of neverland.

Mortality constantly staring you in the face is a wonderful thing. Isn’t this one of the enduring harms inflicted by religion, imbuing everything with eternity? Perhaps this is why everyone does things as they do it. Death is shrouded by ritual and custom, and truth is masked under familiarity. You know you are going to die, but do you actually believe it?