Shadow Of The World

Shadow Of The World
© Surazeus
2024 08 02

With aching heart I sing beauty of light 
reflected strange in silent curious trees, 
which conjures ghost of your soul from the stone 
where you once danced with slow elegant grace, 
but when I cease, to gaze in your eyes, 
you vanish into shadow of the world. 

My love for you, as timeless as the moon 
whose mask mirrors strange beauty of your face, 
glows in my brain with intelligent force, 
so I watch whole wheel of recorded history 
flash before my eyes in swift-changing scenes 
till I understand our role in its play. 

When all the words I have spoken each day 
gather in mist among the apple trees 
to slither in veins of their thirsty roots, 
I feel my soul swirl up forgotten hours 
to rise through rings of time in fragile leaves 
which imitate wings I could use to fly. 

Orpheus feels strange glow of eager love 
to name blurred changing qualities of things 
with rock-rending words his heart reinvents 
by breathing in electric clouds of truth 
so he can sense deep wholeness of all things 
that vibrate at core of our spinning world. 

Transcending death with each season of growth, 
Orpheus glides across meadow of skulls 
to find girl he loves bitten by the snake 
so he strums lyre and sings spell of her name 
that conjures her soul from flowers in rain 
which blossom from soil of her rotten corpse. 

Though he believes he is the maverick 
whose powerful words can revive the dead, 
Orpheus weeps as she dissolves in wind 
till he understands weird language of birds 
who explain wisdom of the lightning storm 
that cleanses his aching heart with sad faith. 

Constructing complex patterns of sweet tunes, 
Orpheus chants perpetual change of fate 
in progressive stages of life and death 
by turns ascending spiral waves of hope, 
but turns away from horror of the truth 
that no soul ever resurrects from death. 

Composing tragic tale of his lost love, 
Orpheus records how Ophelia drowned 
with pale hands clutching her wedding bouquet, 
but his song cannot bring her back to life 
though it preserves her idol in our minds 
which vanish into shadow of the world.