Creatures of Light and Darkness

WORDS

Between you and me,

the words,

like mortar,

separating, holding together

those pieces of the structure ourselves.

To say them,

to cast their shadows on the page,

is the act of binding mutual passions,

is cognizance, yourself/myself,

of our sameness under skin;

it rears possible cathedrals

indicating infinity with steeply-high styli.

For when tomorrow comes it is today,

and if it is not the drop

that is eternity

glistening at the pen’s point,

then the ink of our voices

surrounds like an always night,

and mortar marks the limit of our cells.

“What does it mean?” asks Lord Uiskeagh the Red, who is out with twenty men to raise the Border-side against Dilwit of Liglamenti.

His party leans through fog toward the rock where the words are graven.

“Lord, I’ve heard of these things,” remarks his captain. “They are the doings of the poet Vramin, who publishes in this manner: He casts his poems at the nearest world, and wherever they fall they record themselves upon the hardiest substance handy. He boasts that he has written parables, sermons and poems in stones, leaves and brooks.”

“Oh, he does, does he? Well, what’s this one mean? Is it to be taken as a good omen?”

“It means nothing, Lord, for it’s common knowledge that he’s also mad as a golindi at rutting time.”

“Well, then, let us urinate upon it and be on our way to the wars.”

“Very good, Lord.”