viewingcamelot

Silent gray masses oppressively pass us,

Perpetually preceding the storming,

But never enveloped, so nothing develops

Beyond the bleakest warning.

Pallor cannot instigate. Neither heat, nor rain, penetrate

The muted, mobile display.

Nor can thunder threaten to sunder

We who follow gray.

Time advances, but stasis reigns with no joys or pains

To pierce the mist.

The blanket of numb will keep undone

The fetish and the fist.

Yet echoes from the divide rankle inside

Even under sleeping fog.

There’s an impulse to fly, to see a clear sky,

Above our smothering smog.

Fyodor, my Fyodor,

I fell in love with you as a child

When I read all your stories

Of the wounded, the wanting, the wild.

You also lived in isolation, nearly died,

But your deepest thoughts lay open, undefiled.

I loved you for those.

Luther, my Luther,

Your life captured me first:

Your grief, your guilt, your desperate grace.

In your best, you saw your worst.

You became my brother, my kindred

In flame and thirst.

I loved you for your company.

Lewis, my Lewis,

You, my letter-bearer, my closest friend,

Opened wonder, beauty, structure,

Expanse of water, and depth of wind.

You explained so much

Of God and men.

I loved you as my teacher.

My brothers, my friends,

Across oceans and mortality,

Foreign languages and foreign lifetimes,

In fellowship you reached out to me, one body.

Though I possessed expanding lungs,

It was always, only, yours to speak,

So I loved you.

Ghosts, my ghosts,

I never walked your halls, or ate your food.

I only saw your polished best;

Never confused, angry, or crude.

I never spoke to your heart, or thought,

Nor was I one of your brood

Who knew you.

I do not know of love quite yet.

Perhaps a blossom in the gale:

A fragile thing that yields to let

Any dominant wind prevail.

Maybe seed scattered to the earth,

On gravel, or in shallow graves.

While weeds may choke to death its worth,

Or its tread on, or barely saved.

It could be firmer than the oak,

A strong and many-splendored thing.

Calamities its name invokes

May be mere lesser, foolish flings.

I fear my love has always been

A walking shadow, a part to play.

All sound and fury, but empty wind

That gambols on at close of day.

Perhaps I’ve never loved at all,

Even I, who has been loved so well.

Perhaps within my heart’s stone walls

Only icy blood may swell.