*I think I've found something I'm really comfortable with. This is a lyrical narrative. Narrative in theory but with lyrical tones. I bet it's not something commonly done before. Ermm....Longfellow or Tennyson might have been close. Well, hurrah for me.*
When Last I saw the Fisher
When last I saw the fisher, I
Could hardly hear the river.
And the fisher,
He sang
And I could not look him in the eye.
Into the last wintry morn,
I fell in the rise, I rang
Blooms and sat near the mist-coloured brook
Near the way the water-bearers took,
Where the berry-pile forms, torn
From the bushes below the blue hill.
I cannot forget the look
Inside the old man’s eye
Until
Myself I see the boatman cross
Slowly, where the water does not toss
Into the waters where all fires die.
The hill from which the star and brook erupt
Gushing,
Stands as destiny’s spear to disrupt
The blue sky hushing
The berries, bushes and rubble when it shakes.
The fisher takes
An urn to the river’s line
To set it down and let it upturn
To spill
The sand, sun-numbered and fine.
With it from the urn
Came a voice that still
Remembers.
All the timbers,
The timbers spasm and leaves curl
As the winds cheat and hurl
The dust on the sky and river.
It spake: “Fisher,
Come to Cumae, where
The old are healed.
I have kneeled
And studied coming dawns. There is nothing there.”
The star above replied:
“The wind is your guide
The berry falls in the sand
And the grains are wetted
By the fruit. This has been planned
And yet you have dreaded.”
The hill stands unashamed and proud,
The sand sifts into the delta and cloud.
The river progresses,
The boat returns, the star regresses.
The fisher sits soft
On his river-moss throne
And the fishing rod is aloft,
The hook in waters alone.
He sits among the reeds and grasses
While the toad on the rock takes its dive.
He says:
“I choose to be alive.”
