"But finally you find that you have people of flesh and blood on your hands, people with will and an individual sensibility of their own, made out of component parts you are unable to change, manipulate or distort." (Harold Pinter)
We walk hand in hand in the peace of the morning. The river flows and reminds us of times past. We haven’t forgotten, but we have forgiven. For us, forgiveness has long been our way to give thanks. After all, the monsters are dead and we are alive, at least alive enough to admire the blue sky reflected in the calm water.
Low tide: it is as if the world, the ocean, had wanted to withdraw, to retire, at the other end, on the other side, perhaps to another galaxy.
The written words cannot be erased, nor the broken promises forgotten.
The heroes have gone, their shadows melted…
faraway, in an unknown land,
only remains the sound of small waves, lashing the rocks.
We listen to the crystal melody of the waterfall. Sun rays bounce off the glistening rocks. Is this a dream, or are we there? There, in the valley we cherish, where, in the sharp, icy air of dawn, our young souls met, one Spring.
It’s not a dream, but it is only a picture. So, my dearest love, we have to wait, for our ghostly shadows to find a way back, there, near the waterfall.
“It looks like cotton…” she said in a calm voice, “Only, there is no-one working here.”
The landscape was quiet, the never disturbed peace of late summer.
“And there is no shadow…” She added, with a sigh. Did she mean “shade”?
He looked up, toward the darker patches of green, beyond the meadow. Small white clouds leisurely walked the sky. He then looked down at his feet. It is then he realised what she had meant: they no longer had shadows…
They must have crossed the border, in this silence, from the land of the living, to the land of memories.
Time had stopped.
Away from this stage,
is another test –
another round,
where force plays no role,
but the changing face,
the soft verses,
of an everlasting poem…
Photo: Jardins du Luxembourg, Paris, ©2013 Honoré Dupuis
We lie on the meadow, a mid-summer dream,
High above the woods, a large bird soars to the deep blue sky:
we have seen the mark, the proof that she was there,
among us, our dearest ghost…
Photo: Medway valley, ©2014 Honoré Dupuis
The shallow, clear water runs lazily between the rocks,
and the little islands of green life.
Oft we crossed the old bridge,
On our many walks, through this blessed land,
Observing, and being observed,
by creatures far more ancient, and wiser, than us.
Oft, we looked at our reflections in the mirror below.
Only, now, we only see the light of the sky,
for our images have been erased.
The free fall was the same, every night. There was the sheer terror of destruction, of being shredded on the sharp rocks, so far down, down… But he knew that this was a dream: as dawn came, he would see the light, inhale the scent of the ocean, for there was no fall, and the shore he remembered well: the sound of waves, her smile, their fading steps in the wet sand…
Then the nurse would come, and asked him how he had slept. As ever, he would smile and reply: “I was again on the beach”.
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This was the part he disliked, a role torn from his past, somewhere, far back, as if a trap was slowly closing, as if a fuse was slowly burning…
Picture: Edvard Munch, Vampyr, 1893 – source Wikimedia Commons
