‘There was no wailing, no one to mourn. The only witnesses were themselves hanging from trees at the edge of the pigs’ oak holt. Only the wind wailed a little as it blew through the laden branches. The sea stretched before him, dark and impassive, rolling into the distance without a break, without a mark, a sail, trackless as a haunted forest. He shivered, and something in the endless space made tears smart in his eyes. A yearning to be not on the verge of manhood and alone.’ From Ys.
Found
No wailing no one only the wind the sea without a sail a haunted endless space on the verge of alone.
The heart cut out
Solitude the closed circle an arm’s length away the steel collar without a key.
Not a short story. Only tenuously prose. But there’s a chunk of poetry, a couple of lines from Leonard Cohen chopped up in there,
“And I’ll bury my soul in a scrapbook, with the photographs there and the moss.”
so if it turns out more as a prose poem of 144 words, it’s to be expected. For dverse.
Golden moments
In this wooded place, beneath oaks and poplars, I will listen to the birds, and I’ll bury my soul. In a scrapbook, with the photographs, there, and the moss that grows on the northside, I‘ll leave my memories, for what they’re worth. You know where to find them. You share them too. I’ll fill jars and boxes with seeds and sunlight, shavings of the moon, the flash of russet, deer, squirrel, fox. Children have their own lives, are building their own memories. What we have is ours alone. Trees whisper, birds and stream water murmur words of wisdom. Even dogs and cats have the secret. Listen. Sit awhile in the twilight hour when the world is golden and still. We have this, and nothing is greater more immense. Not spaceflight, new kitchens, the ecstatic roar of a crowd. Only a new baby comes close.
Our little town has a wildlife sanctuary that extends over an area of woodland and wetland in the last major meander of the Garonne. Recently, the gravel extraction site next to it has turned a large area of old quarries into lakes and donated the land to the local branch of the protection and study of the environment people. You can walk around some of the lakes, and dogs are allowed on a lead. It’s beautiful and peaceful, and already the wildlife has begun to colonise the site.
There was no one about, only a mixed flock of sheep and goats with bells, and their dog, a patou, doing what patous do, warning people and dogs to stay away from his flock. The patou doesn’t herd his charges, they follow where he leads them in an orderly group. One goat, an elegant, rather gazelle-like animal hung behind to stare at us in curiosity and had to be called to order by Patou. Lovely bucolic scene.
We saw juvenile swans, coromorants, egrets, moorhens and terns. The water is full of fish, and even Bix, who hates getting his feet wet, had to be held back from throwing himself in. Best of all though, there were otters, several of them. I have never seen an otter before and it was a real thrill to watch them diving and hunting in the tree shade where the swans were keeping out of the sun. No photos. I was too excited watching them to think of pictures.
This is a lovely place, just a few minutes across the river from us, to be returned to soon. We only did a part of the circuit as it was getting hot and we weren’t sure how long it is. And next time we’ll bring binoculars.
Every day unfurls as it must, every day opens flower-like come rain or shine, and every day ends by furling its flags in admission of defeat. There was fire in the sky, I remember, before ash spread, dimming the light, grey and dusty, embers dead, no warm glow. The day she died furled and curled like a wounded animal. It flickered from evening to dawn with lightning, and the sky rumbled with thunder.
I remembered what we were taught at school about Good Friday, and the elements unchained in anger and sorrow, and that old story, about someone too ancient to imagine in a far-off exotic country, took form and meaning. I looked at the sky-fire turning to ash, and where the cloud broke and drifted, saw a black cat, treading among the first stars that glittered like dew in the morning meadow
I haven’t looked at the Ekphrastic prompts in a while, but this Pissarro brought back too many memories not to join in.
Thank you to Lorette at Ekphrastic Review for selecting my piece of prose. You can read all of the chosen pieces here.
That was then
A rain of light, a jewel box, Paris nights on the grands boulevards were brilliant then. Roof slate, slick-glittered purple and midnight blue, and the hot gold of music poured from brasseries, peals of laughter, and the click-clack of hoofs, water-splashing. The echoes lingered long, so long I heard them before they faded. Les filles were the same, the paint, the pose, the clatter of plates, chink of glasses, and the brassy yellow light, smelling of choucroute and bright red lobster corpses. Waiters, white shirted, black tied and aproned, swooped like swallows, and in the dark all cars were Tractions. But the vibrant, multi-layered social architecture of the Impressionists, Piaf, Simenon, Jean Gabin and Zola was changing. In the streets behind the glitter, the girls waiting in dark doorways, cats at windows, washing hanging out to dry, music blaring, voices shouting in scènes de ménage, all were slowly being tidied away, pushed out beyond the périphérique into the soulless suburbs, so the rich of the world could have the playground of lights, the rain slicking off purple slate all to themselves. What was once a city of squalor and beauty, misery and merveilles, a noisy colourful cacophony of sounds and smells, of rain and refuse in streets where satin shoes and buttoned boots trod, where urchins followed red balloons, is now a cemetery inhabited by ghosts, as at home here as in Dubai, New York, London. They have it all now, squeezed of life and colour, cleansed of its ordinary people, workers, families, old folk with their chairs out on the pavements, babies in prams, dogs, street vendors and prostitutes. The argot of the titis parisiens has been replaced by sanitised interactions in the universal language of wealth, and the Paris of Maigret, Montand and Monet is dead.
Absolutely lovely review of night horses. I like to think that I write straightforward poetry, allusive and imagist, but uncomplicated. What you see is what you get. I think Merril ‘got’ the essence of it perfectly. Thank you!
It was so beautiful and bright today, and warm (25°C/77°F), that I took Bix and Redmond into the woods at the other side of the lane. In the wintry gloom we all find them a bit intimidating, but with the sun streaming between the tree trunks it’s just lovely. The leaves are unfolding, the birds are in full voice, and the wild flowers, comfrey, pulmonaria, wild tulips and cuckoo flower are all out.
We followed an animal track that eventually turned left down into the dense part of the woods where the stream runs. I didn’t want to go any further without a path as my sense of direction is nil and the two great hunters wouldn’t be much help if I got lost.
We’ll walk through the lower part by the stream tomorrow. This glorious weather seems set to last all week.
For the dverse prosery prompt. The line of verse by Helen Dunmore is:
‘…city lilacs release their sweet, wild perfume then bow down, heavy with rain.’
Judgement
‘When the time comes, you will march down to the square, where the dusty city lilacs release their sweet, wild perfume, then bow down, heavy with rain and regrets that you ever believed your plot could succeed. In the square, in the rain and the heavy scent of lilacs, with the crowd standing silent, the firing squad will end your lives. One by one, you will fall, like leaves from a dying tree, and like the leaves, when you are swept away, no one will remember you had even lived.’
The bland-faced man in the stiff uniform, who was judge, jury, god and priest rose, and for an instant, a flicker of compassion animated his dead eyes, and I knew he would carry the guilt of those deaths until his final breath.
The Four Swans 