The Faerie Mural

I’m sorry that you died and that I did not,
You have your yesterdays, but only I have tomorrows.
And you will never know what I found,
In the house where love drew us down.
Old stone walls and frigid flagstone floors,
The rugs you laid, they’re all still here,
As is a part of you, the part of you that lives
In the haze of memory; the ghost of you in me.
So, shall I tell you what I found,
Beneath the deadening grey plaster walls?
We never coloured them, only endured them,
But there was always a secret there,
A secret you will never know of where you are,
So let me whisper it to you now across the breach.
The rupture can only be bridged in dreams;
Dreams where you still abide it seems.

You always loved the blossom on the cherry tree,
Herald of Spring, courier of new life.
But this year it blossomed without your touch;
Do you remember your hands upon the bark,
Summoning what lived within, with your cornflower eyes?
Its flowering now seems dulled, morose,
As if it grieves its human confidant, and what you sensed within
Has withdrawn, shuns the light, and resides alone.
But one singular April dawn, I sat beneath it,
Unstaunched tears hazing my view; despondent, lost.
When — as the mourning sun touched its boughs —
What lives in its confines spoke to me,
A voice that sounded like yours; lineaments of you,
But tempered and formed by something new.
This is what it told me, void of emotion,
Beyond and transcendent, the words unbroken.

‘Go dream tonight, go dream of her,
Dream hard and fast to the echoless shore,
Where, all knowing in the seventh heaven,
She will hear your tears and see your words.
And when you return from that formless realm,
That place where you are clothed in your real self,
Come once more to us at dawn of day,
And take the clue that comes your way.’
I went that night and dreamt as instructed,
A serene reverie where you and I were one,
And held each other under a cherry tree
That was and was not the one of reality,
Formed almost into a dulcimer melody,
Where sound, sight and touch were of a piece.
Next day I rose with the sun and went
To find the promised clue that was to be sent.

I touched the bark, but now there was no voice,
Just a listless lull; a mitigated silence of choice.
Cast down I sank to the roots, which overground resided,
Whereupon my hand grazed a nestled stone,
Cold to touch, but flat and chalky, I took it in my palm,
And found it was a piece of plaster, deadened grey.
At once I knew that fragment was from our wall,
And first thought in my mind was that you had heard the call,
That you had escaped the dream and put it there,
A sign for me to act upon, deposited with care.
Heart flickering, head swimming, I took myself into the house
To scan the walls, to find and choose the hollow
Amidst the pallid extent, that matched my fragment,
A puzzle piece awaiting your empyrean attachment.
And there it was, before unseen, a fracture in the hall;
Sure what I was to do, I found a cross-blade and rent the wall.

Dead grey gave way to living blue; an azure luminance,
On a hidden plaster, till now obscured from view.
And then amidst the cobalt mural some figures did appear;
A ring of dancing faeries, vibrant, animated, and clear,
As they circled round, swaying and swirling with abandon,
As if their liberation into light, made them live before my eyes.
I continued my work apace, and as the plaster crumbled away,
Light from without met light from within, where blue held sway,
And thus, inch by inch, She showed herself and was revealed;
The Faerie Queen, surveying all, with oceanic eyes.
With hair like wind captured in the branches of trees,
And on her peerless head a diadem of golden leaves,
She smiled elusive, and seemed to look inside my mind;
Penetrating all that love and death had wrought.
And she was you, and you were her, amidst a golden numinous glow;
Then voices from the deep abyss revealed a marvel and a secret. Be it so.

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Victoria Darcy worked with me to produce the wonderful cover image for the poem.

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Dead but Dreaming the novel is available now…