Green Rose

 

Green Rose 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Green Rose

 

By Greg Patrick

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  “The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh.”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

“For a Muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention,
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene.”-William Shakespeare

 

“Time held me green and dying

Though I sang in my chains like the sea”-Dylan Thomas

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A lone horseman reined-in at the threshold of forest’s dark sanctuary, a chill wind sang through the canopies of oaks as he raised his forearm beckoningly and a falcon pale-feathered as moonbeams rose gracefully

to the beacon of a lit window in yonder castle afar..bound to it’s talons was a message for eyes of the green of fathomless Celtic sea..

The falcon was emblazoned against the rising full moon on whose tides he sailed for this shore..

Feathers falling like ghost tears for the slain chieftains on whom the grass had grown, it’s shrill cry like a land bereaved of heirs sang, seeming to herald his homecoming to a green Ithaka.

Moonbeams tinged green as they filtered through the swaying banners of leaves lit his face like a highwayman’s mask as he sighed a name like the title of the song, his breath steaming in the cold..

He had fallen asleep sheltered amid ancient standing stones, his sleep haunted by strange dreams..It had been many ages since the hills and enemies had trembled under the  great charioteer warriors..the legends banished

from the songs of the clans but they existed in dream and in songs in the depths of forest like forbidden love songs to one beyond their station.

Wreaths of mist crowned the kings in ghostly coronation as he whispered bardic songs in his sleep.

He awoke to the rising light as he rode through the monoliths of ancient tribes long passed, architects of dreams and mystery in a storied land.

 

He had paused, eyes closed like the last faithful scribe at the deathbed of a Highking, the last loyal retainer

in a dark empty throneroom recording his echoing words..

 

 

In the misty dawn a herd of red deer scattered as a horse and rider broke cover from the sentinel-like trees. Sensing they were not his quarry they paused and looked on curiously as he rode towards the distant castle..

Landscape seemed dreamscape like the radiance of dawn fluttering at a dreamer’s opening eyes…Fields adorned with flowers like a gown of a princess who awaited to be reunited with a returned prince in homecoming..

As if roses piled in memory of one lost at the sea were cast up instead hailing the seafarer’s unexpected return..

The hooves fell in synchrony with his heart and the wind roared in his ears..

Like a cold shadow cast suddenly by gathering clouds he remembered when last he rode these fields they were red-ashed in aftermath of battle and the besieged castle

was like an Atlantean bastion all but falling under stormswept waves of flame.

He had marched at the vanguard of a rebel band to the shrill of bagpipes in renegade intervention when his chieftain had taken oath of fealty to a lord across the sea..

He would not disavow his love’s clan when the enemy marched on their walls.

 

In exile he had looked back across the wake with Orphean valediction to the diminishing shore before setting his eyes grimly to the Scheharadian allure of the dark horizon on a voyage to Eastern lands and crusade..

vowing to return. The last sight of his homeland was the distant trees of the fall like red banners..when the leaves are green again I shall return..

The ocean-bound wind swept from the trees to his hair and closed his eyes, his lips moving in soundless prayer..

 

 

Now the horse of an exotic breed from lands of oasisless mirages and dunes, tossed red petals from it’s mane like sparks and blood particles as his warhorse had done when he last strode these realms..

And his laughter was a soloist song privy to his own daydreams that beckoned him forth..He halted the stallion, it’s flanks heaving..He caressed the harp he bore at his side, feeling the Aeolian-stirred song

of her laughter in memory..so distant the memory as to seem the time of legends..as distant as the voids between the stars by which the nomad and mariner found their path.

Flurries of crimson petals like a druidic bonfire’s immolation swirled around him..lips spoke her name like a wound reopening when it had pulsed in the cold..The words that came to him were like disembodied voices of the spirits of glen and stream..

The bloodchant of his heart throbbed to the beat of words unsung..but all great words begin forbidden..They echo in catacombal

secrecy before they are sung gentiley before court and empress..

 

 

He wore the garb of a humble itinerant minstrel but the ravens had seen the chainmail and scabbard before he donned it and coweled his face..

They knew death rode with him and they hovered over him like a dark retinue..

He fell in with a band of entertainers seeking a lordly patron as they thronged the road and hastened against the threat of rain to the castle holding court for a betrothal. He passed into the cold shadow of the Norman keep’s gate, squaring his shoulders as it closed behind.

 

Gaelic was forbidden in the castle court now.. troubadours and minstrels sang by lute in the stead of the Hibernian bards,

but when his “name” was called he strode to the harp of the hall like returned Odysseus to the bow only his hand could truly string as the suitors looked on haughtily..

He strummed at first non-committedly then as their eyes met as she sat engarlanded like a floral enhaloment and gowned in white ermine and

gossamer..bard’s vision of beauty behind startingly green eyes and natural crown of red..

The merriment of the table that had drowned out the other minstrels, the jests and mirth fell silent as if by incantation as the harpsong

cast it’s apparitional spell with the moonbeams..

His very words that incantation under the enchantment of the muse..

He told their story in the props and trappings of the Norman lord’s own land, to the castles of the Loire valley..In turn the song

was cathartic.. sad as a letter written on eve of battle and at others the song was aloof

as a soloist or pilgrim lighting a shrine candle for his own dream..

Like Orion’s song in the eternal wilds of the stars haunting the earthbound..

He played as maleficiently as he had amid the pavilion fires of the crusader armies

so far from tuliped fields of Christendom before they were to cross sword with scimitar..

 

It was written that “moonlight was sculpture” but harpsong is like the art of a tapestry-maker..

A storyboard of scenes of battle and chase seemed to be woven before spellbound eyes in phantasmal procession..

The fire that silhouetted him like a rebel angel playing in the flames sighed like charmed serpents

as flames were granted form and face to enact scenes before they faded back into the embers like a reuniting of the spirit of ghostly lovers under the stars only to fall into the immolation of dawn

 

“Eyes closed then and hands poised at the harp..conversation ceased at it’s first strains like the thaw melting the last snows of winter..it was a bard’s tribute one brought across stormswept moors and pathless forest to a High Queen’s hall…..
Like molten gold and silver the strains seemed..so rich and flowing the chords played..a nocturne of rare bewitchment
like the first belated stars casting their pale spell over the vales..

“Who are you..?” the words hovered in the air..
As if replying to a song request, the music became darker-toned..
playing with a conjuring hand as if with a stage illusionist’s flourish a flight of ravens appeared..their feathers altering colour in mid-air..and as the fire in the hearth swayed and whispered like charmed serpents..scenes and shapes seemed to be granted form as if haunting memory was seanced..the way one would look intently into a fire in bereavement or brooding and behold images of dreams and nightmares morph from flames only to disperse like a vexing mirage of red appearing before a lost pilgrim’s gaze.. one that could not be extinguished by all the oasises before them..visions like sandcastles built by young dreamers only to be swept away by sunset waves.. or a nomad’s footsteps on red dunes swept away by the ageless wind ..Some exorcised ghosts others conjured them..He was a conjurer among ghosts and haunted ruins that were once castles..”

 

 

 

It was said that “all memories happen to music”..His eyes sang their duet to hers

face mirrored in voluminous depth of green..In a culture of silence, the expressive gaze is a soloist’s tribute that can be heard across a room filled with noise, in a land seeking fulfillment afforded by song to a void left by an empty throne at it’s heart. It’s unsung wordless expression an endearment bespoke by gaze alone heard across a crowded room. The mind is the composer’s origin of song after all, the heart it’s birthplace and even in deafening silence after the last echo of the last fighting rebel’s battlecry, there is song as inspiration is it’s essence..

 

As if the smile alone like notes read by a Stradivarius-player

transported them with the raw wild beauty of the song to the shore of a loch with

the twilight-reddened waves lapping at her feet as she stood like a poem written against the sunset.

As he doffed his helm and a sash of green bound his arm before battle on the morrow.

 

Under cover of darkness, vines flowing like a green tapestry from the castle walls were scaled hand over hand..

A waiting horse’s tether held by a kern was passed to a gauntleted wolf-pelt sleeved hand.

In answer to a serenade she appeared at the window like a PreRaphealite masterpiece subject framed. The very essence

of a Celtic bard’s inspiration.

Her hand held to his forehead a gesture approaching veneration, she was raised to the saddle by a knight clad

in black night-attack armour.

 

A sentry cried out..

and a Gaelic battlecry answered in defiance.

Fire arrows meant to illuminate the grounds like flares, streaked around..the horse reared terrified but he held his saddle..

When the hooves fell again he drew an exotic weapon from Eastern lands, a horse archer’s bow

and answered the attack..Men fell from the battlements as the iron-shod hooves smote the cobbles in flight.

 

A cauldrenous mist seemed to gather as if the ghosts haunting ruins and standing stones thronged the warrior poet to

hear his songs..mist seemed to shroud the protectively as if they passed into legend..