The Pilgrim

It's long. art by dinayassine: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Pilgrim-357256899

The Pilgrim

Part I

Sunlight, blind me; unending gleam.

Ocean, shade me; metallic sheen.

Lower the sails, not far to go

Borne by wine and wind and woe.

I’ve left my city and set off to

A land where I might make anew

The tattered road from whence I came

And repair the ruins of my family name.

 

Ocean, bind me! Land in sight

Ocean, blind me, land is light!

What matter of twilight and dark

Upon whose essence I can’t remark.

With ragged arms I extend my hands

To the sunlit city warmed in the sands.

With heavy haste I breathe and leave

My thoughts of winter and early eve.

 

The Captain jabs, “get on with it!”

He and his love soon derelict

And left to wallow in the waves,

Want of merriment and haze

Want of care and company.

A servant of land, a slave of sea,

She looks away, askance

Want only of a second glance.

 

Travelers are always alone,

For to renounce the land is to renounce a home.

I must not settle in this faraway land,

Unmake my footprints across the sand.

I renounce the sea and wandering clout

And unclaim the land far as I see.

I take my leave of assured doubt,

Hope of my home I travel without!

 

As bid my crew well with the waves,

I spy a torch man: hollow, grave.

How does a man, when wearing light

Recall his rote, but forget delight?

So when I spoke such to the man

And torch aglow, he raised his hand.

 

“They set their oil and I set a flame,

It lights their houses but not their names.

Upon avenue and alley-way,

My mark is quick; my farce of day.

Routine and route: my sanctuary,

My nightly path is stationary.

Yet though I picture every turn

I wish such turns I would unlearn.”

 

But lo! say I, what wondrous force

To be impetuous in course

And know each step after the last -

Wish and worry - before it’s passed.

 

But nay, say he, “I pass the time

On steps routine and yet not mine.

What’s more, I fear my work unjust,

I mock the moon and break her trust.

And though I long for sweet reprieve,

She keeps me here; I cannot leave.”

 

Upon such a note he’d had his say,

He bid me well and slipped away.

To me, it seemed no way a pity

To feel at home in such a city.

The lamps he lit I could not count,

Warmth not within he shared without.

 

And now I turn my thoughts ahead

To nestled inn and sheltered bed.

What clemency! Unrivaled joy

The breadth of comfort to deploy

One’s body prone or back supine

Away from heathen and refined

Away from quorum, key, and class

Away from home; arrived at last.

 

 

Part II

Upon this weathered, wearing rock

Remains a relic, regress and still.

Its martyred mortar sad and bare,

Deplorable and cold and trill.

 

Its visage sneers as I draw near,

Its pallid focus honed by years.

A thousand years I have adhered

My dry eyes on its veneer.

 

A half an arch, perhaps one-fourth

Of stone so crumbling and coarse

Reduced by want or vagrant force.

Reduced to a relic

Bitter and old.

 

Part III

Eight months a Pilgrim borne from sea

Eight moons mock me endlessly

Eight days I've only sand to see

Eight nights each infinity.

And here, I wander

The waterless shore

Listening to the cackling

Of the ocean as it

Slips

Through the cracks

Between my brains.

 

And here, I wonder

If upon that moor

The ships in

Idle flourish

Detest or adore

The desert:

His waves finite

And latticed - predictable and plain,

His travelers lost:

Suitors unwilling

And mismatched.

What refuge in the desert!

 

The ocean sighs,

Do I adore the desert?

 

The desert - delicate and demure

Admonished adjutant of the deep!

 

Courted and cuffed

To the moon, her servant,

Her object, her love.

 

She fills the sky only once

And he loves her - but then

She is gone - and the desert,

Poor dry desert,

Thinks he loves.

 

Hot, sparse, are his fruits!

Warm, curling, rancid fruits

Drowned in sunlight and the sand,

Chiseled, countless crags.

They will never be

Smooth as the sea.

 

Bitter, greedy, slothful fruits!

Wanton! They are wayward

Yet still, they know that they

Are ever salt and stone!

 

Unwanted fruits!

Silent and regress

But unforgivably borne.

B*****d, b*****d, bombastic fruits!

 

Symbols of the slave the desert.

Idols for the men and the moon.

Titans in the sand.

Part IV

B*****d fruits, thought the pilgrim,

Wandering far and free

And wandering far from the sea

The gates around a city -

“Tell us! Tell us, traveler,

How have you come to we

Who languish far from the sea?”

 

Said the pilgrim: I wander

Far and free

Cradled and crippled and

Borne on the breeze.

Far from here, beyond the crags

On the edge of the jagged mountains

There are eight months of thought and sand

Baked into these rags.

 

“The traveler talks in time.

Temerity! Tenacity!

Be well that he should enter here:

Let him sit, and let him be.”

 

I breathe through wooden walls

Light and shallow, shadowed, tall.

Reviews

[Kelley Quinn]

its beautiful - dont let anyone tell you otherwise