Half-dead and half-alive, I found myself wandering through a dark wood, unknowing of where I was intended or a way out of those shadow-bent paths. Leaves fell to the rich earth as if in a shudder the veins that held them to their dark, barked bodies had suddenly let go their sticky hold, surprised by my sudden intrusion.
Frantic in my attempt to escape from that Autumn prison, I stumbled in my broken path upon a small branch-built shelter beneath which crouched a man and a fire. He slowly caught me in his gaze and beckoned that I should join him out of the cold of the approaching dark. Not knowing if I was awake or asleep, I entered that shelter and sat beside that woodsman and a fire that gave off no heat. In answer to my doubtful hesitation, he spoke:
“This forest is a beacon burns to light the ways of men
But as men must all seasons bear, its warmth can warm not them
For always and forever will the sun and all its beams
Bear Summer’s noons and afternoons into these roots and leaves.
Could you but feel what this wood feels; could you but taste or touch
Your very soul would melt and join into its selfsame dust.”
He spoke, and his voice and eyes seemed somehow a veil under the night sky and its stars.
I spoke long with him, and wide, and many-riddled answers he gave to me until it seemed that the very lock at the gates of dawn was slowly and inevitably falling open. Afraid of such a morning, I moved to leave, but quickly he clasped me by my arm as I stood, and looking deeply into the wide dark of my eyes, the woodsman spoke:
“Never have you heard, in your wanderings over this wide middle-earth, of Branwyn’s tale, whose beauty still lives, eternally-haunting the trees.
Oh, it is a song as old as I am, and I am one of whom it was written ‘he shall hear the song of the stars, and live until such song is sung to the ears of man by the mouth of a man.’
Have you heard?
I will make you hear.”
So, trapped between the splintered dawning and the sun-born wood, longing to make my way onward to the west, I heard, and what I heard, I tell to you.
She grew like a rose. Wild rose, she grew – upward, to the skies.
In the time before the world was wild – brown her hair, her eyes.
A child, her father made green gifts under the cherry tree.
He found in the wood full many a figure beautiful to see.
A child, she grew into a lass – and tall she was, and fair
Though Time came down and took her father, still she lingered there.
Long she wept and mourned his body under the cherry tree.
Poor Johnny saw her from afar; she was beautiful to see.
He went with her across the waters to where the woods grew wide
And many an hour with his hands built her bower– in silence, she beside.
They walked upon the forest floor and slowly Johnny knew
Her heart did not belong with him, but with the woods that grew.
So was poor Johnny’s heart beguiled and far he went away
But stayed sweet Branwyn with the trees as night grew into day.
And in the Summer-morning light her spirit still is seen.
Swiftly it steals behind the branches, such brown betouched with green.
So sing my friends your songs of souls that wander in this earth
And sing of dawnings in the East, such songs of sweet rebirth
But I will sing of dryads green that breathe the forest air
Their mother, most beautiful to see, sweet Branwyn the fair.
So goes the star-song, and as I heard, the fire slowly waned into ember. I woke, and went my way westward, wondering that such dreams are the lot of man on this middle-earth between the sea and stars.
Adding your comment: