Songbird by losselen

Songbird

This old cold

how like a sly lime
this peering hollow
in an evil hour,
sings into your bones.

Is it the same ice, Felagund
left by some heatless,
heatless fire, an empty keel there of
blood     kin     oath
yet none you took, yet there you lie.

Mortals and oaths!
Knowing nothing
of the death not but written in;

Felagund, do you yet know what I know:
all your kingdoms turned clay.
And yet you lie dying!

Tell me then
the estimated boundaries
of our circumscribed world,
where your mind wandered in all the time hence.

For I remember you last
a moonlit movement lost amid wolves and darkness;
     by your grace was the fate won:

I see the
     pallid brushstrokes
in your futility.

No evil rent your hands,
neither fang nor treachery, though
     his song echoed in the harrowed halls.
Your words betrayed you.

And your gaze flaring,
what triumphant movement in defeat
     cast into the dark

a muted songbird
fallen, with wings contracted

Chapter End Notes

Written in 2006.