A Council of Twelves For Counsel of Life

                            (The Deep Request)

 

     Thirty years ago,

I stood equatorial with high adventure –

     A young buck with prowess and skill,

Trained and tanned – and shoot to kill,

A bronze of boy with blonde of hair and,

     I thought the devil wouldn’t challenge

Me at all, wouldn’t dare strike my tall,

 

     E’en then as far as one could see,

My neck still couldn’t fit the collar of all

Khaki issue, but more than that,

     ‘What for the Belgian Fen?’

 

     I brave – wandered upon those tracks

That wishfully I still want to walk this day,

But more an earnest thought………

 

     ………’I need, I need those tracks as if my life is now to end!’

 

2.

 

     Here now I stand before a Woman and Her Son,

A picture that has been my pride for all a thousand years

Or more,

     Her lips pursed, Her Son upon Her breast and sleeping,

Those intelligent eyes that behold an ancient

Greeting, an ancient pleased that now

     Is pleading,

     ‘come to die and be My foal as no-one

Knows your kindred love like the Ancients

You have strived to be with peace,

     Come to die, and be, my Son.’

 

     This picture of a diamond heart conjures

A memory of a day I saw a fellow human sorrowed,

Like my own, just like my own where all

Around mask theirs, mask their own as if,

     Not one is owned or like many a poorest

Of poverty, it is beaten beyond their own reflection!

 

     I stand before the picture, and hastily turn on

Every lamp within this stolen house of repetitious gloom,

     Just to catch the eyes - that return a sparkle as

‘Our’ babe sleeps upon her buxom,

     My legs begin to ache as the tears

Present the salt upon my lips, head tilted –

The same angle to fetch a union – long since gone,

     But the concentration can never be sustained

As within this silent room, I hear each tiny

Droplet of water touch the floor,

 

     This granite man could once have been

Enthralled to find the sweetness within the

     Salt I had never tasted before, but

Upon the bared boards of a wooden floor –

There now lays thousands of stained cloudy

Dried up droplets of remorse,

     Each one – not a chance of life again.

 

     Deeper I dwell and peer into the mirrored eyes

Of kindred kind, and still there yet – a home to

The pain that is home in mine own eyes too,

     My legs begin to tremble as the clock seeks

A daily repetition that I have stood there grieving,

     And as the pain persists I do not drop but

Rest, I disengage the vision of a woman truly loved,

     And note in passing - the reflection in the glass

Of a tired and tortured man who is still there,

     Looking out from within those eyes –

The same angle, the same perspective and loneliness,

     The very same benevolence and grace -

Where there he is, so too our daughter,

     Fast asleep and safe,

     Lay across twinning hearts of unity –

That still …………… persist the courage to defy.

 

 

Michael J Waite 23^rd April 2020   ...   -

 

for a very long abstract version of this that is based in sounds sculpted from synthesized music, please go to youtube and key in ZTK Space - Certificate of 'D' or,

click on this link. It is long, and you will want a dark room and a bottle of red.