Visions

The ‘count I now will quote to you in dream to me was shown.

A city in a tree I saw

And mist around it played

And springing from three central boughs

A fountain there did spray.

And through the mist the light of day

Refracted through the tree

And spectrums formed and danced their way

Around that fair city.

Now by the spout, an innocent

In scraps filthy and worn,

Stood wailing, and my heart was rent

To see his ghastly form.

The city fell to hopeless night -

The boy therein was trapped.

Cold ignorance and fear his plight,

His life and vigor sapped.

Ignored, forgotten, was the child.

His azure eyes did plead -

Those faded eyes, that rotten smile

Of sallow stinking teeth.

He held a parchment, old and brown,

Where words in blood and jet -

By Norns and Nemesis scrawled down,

Had sold the child to Death.

I asked the boy there in the wood

“Pray, tell me, child, your name?”

He shuddered as his gaunt frame stood,

His eyes like coals aflame.

His raven tongue from rotten gums

At first, formed soundless words.

Then like the gasp when life is done,

He spoke - My name I heard.

Then choking, sick polluted air,

So thick I scarce could breathe,

And darkness - hopeless creeping terror

Engulfed us in the tree.

A presence, one not heard, but sensed

In shadows rushing in.

A glint of razor scythe I glimpsed

And Hades' heartless grin.

“Your fate, and mine?” I asked the lad,

“To death we both are bound?”

He nodded, and his eyes grew sad,

He crumpled to the ground.

Then like an angel’s trump a voice

Spoke out and shook the night.

“Take heart, my children. Hope! Rejoice!”

Behold, a beam of light!

The shimmering, it lit the fount.

The water turned to red.

Then “Drink. Be cleaned.” The voice cried out.

The child lifted his head.

He dipped his hands into the blood

And light engulfed us all,

And screeching, dark and horror fled,

The boy grew strong and tall.

He took the contract of our fate

And plunged it in the fount,

And when he pulled the parchment free

The words had been washed out.

Around us, sprouting, branches grew -

The city new and bright.

The boy and I there beckon you,

Follow us to the light.

In Norse mythology the Norns were three female deities whose spinning and weaving determined the fates of humans and gods alike. Also known as the Fates, or the Three Sisters.

Note from the author:

This was a piece I wrote nearly 20 years ago. At the time, tackling something this long while adhering to patterns of rhyme and meter felt ambitious. It has changed to some extent since I first wrote it, but it is still at its core the same poem I scribbled in my writing notebook in my dorm room back in Bolivia.