Thomas Of Ercildoune

Seven years redundant he returned
across the living waters sound
to where the vacant sunshine burned
in parody of sacred ground.

The stone shone cold, voices broke
upon the familiar clogged clay:
the gods smiled at their latest joke
devised the music of the day.

What had changed? The heart still raged, wore
the rags of office; truth remained,
in strangers faces, but the shore
seemed further, distance had he gained.

"But you," whispered moonlight's voices,
"set free all you held." Deciding
nothing, intervening choices
brought him a fragment of a wing.

Curtains billowed, sails before his eyes,
feet trod the melody of a friend.
Worn by the act, beyond disguise,
he set at naught his empire; all must end.

The new day cold, the others gone
he burned his maps, left dreams behind:
autumnal now, the trees bare bone,
unmoving stood he. In his mind

were found a thousand such places -
the echoes of a moment’s fame
and, guarded by those fantasies,
renounced his bondage and the game.

And stood, upon the waters edge,
beneath the autumn stars, there came
a white deer and a lovers pledge,
eternity to sing: a name.