The Fifth Unwrit
Author's Note: These verses are wrought for a poetess-painter, a fellow poet whose sorrow kindled their first ember; may this little flame, in time, find its way unto her.
—A Quatrain Beneath Eternity—
Upon one leaf, where gravity dreamed slow,
a rain-born orb did tremble under heaven;
her argent quiver made the star-fires flow,
and dawn stood hushed beneath the empyrean;
an ant climbed forth from bark's primeval shrine,
then paused before her—dark against divine.
He drew towards her as the firmament
bent its vast curvature about her sphere;
as though some adamantine gravitation sent
a wandering world where worlds should disappear;
he touched her light—and through his six limbs ran
a shudder older than the breath of man.
He deemed her painter, fashioned out of rain,
with leaf for canvas, sunlight for her dye;
she bore the green world's secret in her vein,
and whole lost heavens trembled in her eye;
their minute orbits crossed beneath the tree—
two infinitudes made briefly one decree.
Then he ascended towards the ancient bough,
she followed that inexorable green descent;
no wound accused the other of the why,
nor did their parting bear resentment;
and time, beyond the jurisdiction of years,
let Earth spend eleven seasons unawares.
He came again. The old light knew his tread;
she had not ceased her pilgrimage through green;
no reckoning rose between the living and dead,
nor any blade of old remembrance keen;
one quill returned above the waiting page—
four living lines outshone an earthly age.
Then came the storm. The leaf became a sea;
the firmament was riven from its throne;
the wind took him beyond all astronomy,
past every star by which the lost are known;
she quaked, and all her little heavens broke—
yet waited for the word he never spoke.
Perhaps he bore one universe to tell;
perhaps her own lay folded in the deep;
perhaps the storm extinguished one farewell
before its syllables had learned to sleep;
she moves still downward through the shaken green—
and somewhere, the fifth line remains unseen.
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