The sickle moon sleeps
The Father lay down exhausted and spent;
Having toiled all day in his fields,
By the light of his lamp he had made his bed;
And slept there on the floor between ears.
This old man owned many fields of barley and wheat;
And though he was rich, he was still fair-minded;
The waters of his well ran free of corruption
And the fires of his forge blazed white-hot but true
His beard was silver as an April stream,
And he bound his works without burden of hate or envy;
When he saw some poor gatherer passing by his fields:
He would say, "Let some of my fruits fall to them by chance".
This man’s mind walked pure, far from crooked paths,
Clothing itself in honesty and well-kempt robes;
His stores always filled to overflowing
Running ever to the poor like a public fountain.
The Father was a good master and a faithful relative;
He was generous, though moderate and thrifty;
The women considered him more worthy than the young man.
For though the young man was handsome, to the old man came greatness.
The old man, nearing the eternal spring at source,
May come to know that timelessness that lies beyond mortal woes;
Though the fire burned in the eyes of young men,
In the eyes of the old man it was the light that shone clear.
So, the Father slept amongst his heaps at night;
In darkness amongst the ruins of summer.,
Reapers sprawled around like fallen troops;
As this happened in very ancient days.
At that time nations had judges for leaders;
People wandered the land as herdsmen with tents
And saw the footprints left by giants in the dirt,
Still soft and wet from the great deluge.
As the sun slept, the ocean was drifting,
The Father, lay eyes closed under starlit canopy;
When above his head the gates of heaven opened a sliver
And from that rent a dream descended gently into his mind.
And in this dream the Father saw an oak tree
That, springing from his gut, reached up forever into the sky;
With descendants climbing its stem in an endless ladder;
With a singing king at its root, and a radiant crown at its height.
And the Father murmured with the voice of his soul,
'How could this come from me?
My years have passed eighty,
And I have no son, and I have no wife.'
'Long ago, she whom I loved, O Heavens!
Left my house for the stream of eternal slumber;
Though our souls are still as one,
Hers half-alive in mine and mine half-dead in hers.
'A people would be born from me! How can I believe it?
How could I have children?
When one is young, one has bright mornings,
As day emerges from night in triumph;
'But, old, one trembles like the birch in winter.
I am a widower, alone, and evening falls upon me,
And my soul turns to face toward the grave,
As a weary ox bends its head towards the waters.'
Thus spoke the Father in his dream, his joy,
Turning his eyes, drowned by sleep, toward the heavens;
The cedar tree does not smell the rose blooming at its base,
And so the old man did not feel the new arrival at his feet.
While he slumbered a wind blew, and a Seed, that future hope,
Had become planted near the Father, beneath his span
With honest heart, it hoped for unknown rays of light,
When the sudden awakening might come to show its course.
The Father did not know the Seed was there,
Nor did the Seed know why it had come there so.
A fresh fragrance rose from asphodel meadows;
The breath of night floated over the land.
The dark was nuptial and august and solemn;
Hidden angels must have hovered over them,
For one saw passing in the night, at times,
Something blue that seemed like a wing.
The breath of the sleeping Father
Mixed with the dull hush of streams over moss.
It was the month where nature was gentle,
The hills were crowned sweet with lilies.
The Seed dreaming, and the Father asleep; the grass felt black;
The tiny bells of sheep trembled at the edge of silence;
A radiant flow of goodness fell clear as starlight from the heavens;
Into the calm of the quiet hour when the lions go to drink.
All slept, across the skies, from high to low and back again;
The stars studded the deepest black of the sky;
A narrow crescent among these flowers of shadow
Shone in the west, and the Seed wondered,
Lying still, eyes half-opened beneath its lids,
Which harvester of that eternal summer
Had, in departing, so carelessly cast
This golden arc into the field of stars.
Deputy Gilliat
Legend of the Age
Vale