Where is Darkness? Where his beast?
Where do mighty eagles feast?
Fire's dead, the wind is still
and shallowness is all I feel

The ties between us
Once Valhalla steel and thunder
Now more that of Aradnian gossamer frayed thin
We gave our all
Now there is nothing left but softness
Gazes still lock
In friendship
The smell of your skin lingers
Against my sheets
I'll always be here
To comfort
To care
Although this road ahead for us splits
They all lead to the same end
I'll be there.

"Now did you mark a falcon,
  Sister dear, sister dear,
Flying toward my window
  In the morning cool and clear?
With jingling bells about her neck,
  But what beneath her wing?
It may have been a ribbon,
  Or it may have been a ring."--
      "I marked a falcon swooping
        At the break of day:
      And for your love, my sister dove,
        I 'frayed the thief away."--

"Or did you spy a ruddy hound,
  Sister fair and tall,
Went snuffing round my garden bound,
  Or crouched by my bower wall?
With a silken leash about his neck;
  But in his mouth may be
A chain of gold and silver links,
  Or a letter writ to me."--
      "I heard a hound, high-born sister,
        Stood baying at the moon:
      I rose and drove him from your wall
        Lest you should wake too soon."--

"Or did you meet a pretty page
  Sat swinging on the gate;
Sat whistling, whistling like a bird,
  Or may be slept too late:
With eaglets broidered on his cap,
  And eaglets on his glove?
If you had turned his pockets out,
  You had found some pledge of love."--
      "I met him at this daybreak,
        Scarce the east was red:
      Lest the creaking gate should anger you,
        I packed him home to bed."--

"O patience, sister. Did you see
  A young man tall and strong,
Swift-footed to uphold the right
  And to uproot the wrong,
Come home across the desolate sea
  To woo me for his wife?
And in his heart my heart is locked,
  And in his life my life."--
      "I met a nameless man, sister,
        Who loitered round our door:
      I said: Her husband loves her much.
        And yet she loves him more."--

"Fie, sister, fie, a wicked lie,
  A lie, a wicked lie;
I have none other love but him,
  Nor will have till I die.
And you have turned him from our door,
  And stabbed him with a lie:
I will go seek him thro' the world
  In sorrow till I die."--
      "Go seek in sorrow, sister,
        And find in sorrow too:
      If thus you shame our father's name
        My curse go forth with you."

Swimming around,
                                  and around,
                                                       nothing else to do
                                                                                      just wondering
                                                                                                                why he is blue.
        He saw another fish,
                                            it went around a dish,
                                                                                  on a high shelf,
                                                                                                             rather like himself.
                    That was white,
                                               de did not know what to do,
                                                                                               as he is blue.

As water is to cleansing rain
and heat as to burning flame,
so are you to me; the same.
My fiery rain.

Fill the gutter of my mind.
Fire the coal your heart has mined.
Burn me to the end of time.
Your fire does reign.

r ~ 4/1/14

--To Rudyard Kipling


The Sword
Singing--
The voice of the Sword from the heart of the Sword
Clanging imperious
Forth from Time's battlements
His ancient and triumphing Song.

In the beginning,
Ere God inspired Himself
Into the clay thing
Thumbed to His image,
The vacant, the naked shell
Soon to be Man:
Thoughtful He pondered it,
Prone there and impotent,
Fragile, inviting
Attack and discomfiture;
Then, with a smile--
As He heard in the Thunder
That laughed over Eden
The voice of the Trumpet,
The iron Beneficence,
Calling his dooms
To the Winds of the world--
Stooping, He drew
On the sand with His finger
A shape for a sign
Of his way to the eyes
That in wonder should waken,
For a proof of His will
To the breaking intelligence.
That was the birth of me:
I am the Sword.

Bleak and lean, grey and cruel,
Short-hilted, long shafted,
I froze into steel;
And the blood of my elder,
His hand on the hafts of me,
Sprang like a wave
In the wind, as the sense
Of his strength grew to ecstasy;
Glowed like a coal
In the throat of the furnace;
As he knew me and named me
The War-Thing, the Comrade,
Father of honour
And giver of kingship,
The fame-smith, the song-master,
Bringer of women
On fire at his hands
For the pride of fulfilment,
Priest (saith the Lord)
Of his marriage with victory
**! then, the Trumpet,
Handmaid of heroes,
Calling the peers
To the place of espousals!
**! then, the splendour
And glare of my ministry,
Clothing the earth
With a livery of lightnings!
**! then, the music
Of battles in onset,
And ruining armours,
And God's gift returning
In fury to God!
Thrilling and keen
As the song of the winter stars,
**! then, the sound
Of my voice, the implacable
Angel of Destiny!--
I am the Sword.

Heroes, my children,
Follow, O, follow me!
Follow, exulting
In the great light that breaks
From the sacred Companionship!
****** through the fatuous,
****** through the fungous brood,
Spawned in my shadow
And gross with my gift!
****** through, and hearken
O, hark, to the Trumpet,
The ****** of Battles,
Calling, still calling you
Into the Presence,
Sons of the Judgment,
Pure wafts of the Will!
Edged to annihilate,
Hilted with government,
Follow, O, follow me,
Till the waste places
All the grey globe over
Ooze, as the honeycomb
Drips, with the sweetness
Distilled of my strength,
And, teeming in peace
Through the wrath of my coming,
They give back in beauty
The dread and the anguish
They had of me visitant!
Follow, O follow, then,
Heroes, my harvesters!
Where the tall grain is ripe
****** in your sickles!
Stripped and adust
In a stubble of empire,
Scything and binding
The full sheaves of sovranty:
Thus, O, thus gloriously,
Shall you fulfil yourselves!
Thus, O, thus mightily,
Show yourselves sons of mine--
Yea, and win grace of me:
I am the Sword!

I am the feast-maker:
Hark, through a noise
Of the screaming of eagles,
Hark how the Trumpet,
The mistress of mistresses,
Calls, silver-throated
And stern, where the tables
Are spread, and the meal
Of the Lord is in hand!
Driving the darkness,
Even as the banners
And spears of the Morning;
Sifting the nations,
The **** from the metal,
The waste and the weak
From the fit and the strong;
Fighting the brute,
The abysmal Fecundity;
Checking the gross,
Multitudinous blunders,
The groping, the purblind
Excesses in service
Of the Womb universal,
The absolute drudge;
Firing the charactry
Carved on the World,
The miraculous gem
In the seal-ring that burns
On the hand of the Master--
Yea! and authority
Flames through the dim,
Unappeasable Grisliness
Prone down the nethermost
Chasms of the Void!--
Clear singing, clean slicing;
Sweet spoken, soft finishing;
Making death beautiful,
Life but a coin
To be staked in the pastime
Whose playing is more
Than the transfer of being;
Arch-anarch, chief builder,
Prince and evangelist,
I am the Will of God:
I am the Sword.

The Sword
Singing--
The voice of the Sword from the heart of the Sword
Clanging majestical,
As from the starry-staired
Courts of the primal Supremacy,
His high, irresistible song.

I gave my heart to a woman--
I gave it her, branch and root.
She bruised, she wrung, she tortured,
She cast it under foot.

Under her feet she cast it,
She trampled it where it fell,
She broke it all to pieces,
And each was a clot of hell.

There in the rain and the sunshine
They lay and smouldered long;
And each, when again she viewed them,
Had turned to a living song.