.jpg)
Here is a poem that I have been working on for some time now. I wanted to make an ode to the mythic art of perception. There is an inversion of Plato's cave here in that the cave is the external reality, dead and dark, and my eye is the oculus through which the image must escape to be brought to light. There is a lot of Tolkien's Mythopoeia to be seen here as the majority of the poem is about the gods behind the perception. I hope you enjoy it.
I welcome any critiques, suggestions, and comments.
Thanks
A Fall Day in the Mountains of Colorado
The carcass of a mountain lies moldering in a cave.
The ever eroding corpse contains nothing but dust and spars,
With moldy stocks still sucking juice from out of dirty tarns.
These lifeless rocks are now beset with endless rigor mortis,
And sickly lymph drips down and flows from wounds and oozing scars.
The sepulcher is sealed all round without a single fissure,
The dark hermetic dome is closed, all spectral, firm and tall,
With one spent torch, mere ember now, gloaming ‘cross the hall,
A cinder, cold, emitting sparks which beam in particle waves,
They cast deceptive, shadowy forms across the bending wall.
But from that brand - unbidden - bright Valkyrie ride.
Upon photonic steeds they fly above the rotting blight,
To snatch the corpses’ essence up, and swiftly flee the night.
Across the vault, Valhalla bound, they burn with souls in arm,
And flee that gruesome grotto through the oculus of my sight.
They burst upon the fecund fields which grow inside my mind,
And there upon its heavenly plain, their lifeless load impart.
‘Till from the trenches etched by time inside my singing heart,
The craftsmen of creation creep to work their faerie skill,
Upon these raw sensations. The medium of their art.
The first one there, my god of song, spies the feckless flame,
And, chanting to its blackened core, he reignites its fire.
The rosy fingers of its light reach up and ever higher,
Inside his chariot, up he flies, to light the arching sky,
And tune the music of the spheres by strumming on his lyre.
That legend flame illuminates my Dryads stepping close,
To weep and quake and death’s hold break from off the brittle trees.
My clever Titan, with stolen fire, paints the trembling leaves,
While swaying boles are slaked with snow bourn down from Olympus’ spire,
Aeolus plays his songs of life on stem and branch and breeze.
My God of thunder from the north, a hammer in his hand,
Measures up the carcass of the mountain, full of reek.
He crushes down with mighty Mjolnir; an ancient myth’s technique.
The rumbling of his craftsmanship booms inside my soul,
And from its stony bones is raised a majestic purple peak.
My nyad Coventina reaches out to touch his scars,
Her flowing fingers turn the ooze to water swift and cold.
A laughing song escapes its mouth and adds its voice of gold.
The song of life surges up and echoes off the dome-
Itself a sapphire tapestry that Zeus himself unrolled.
I am the Christ of all I see inside the cave’s dark wall.
These happy souls in rapture rest inside a gilded hall.
Brought to life by my divine in elvish, mythic art,
These days sing songs of all I am in the mead hall of my heart.
Brandon Pearce
