The boundary that brands this world, beyond
Is a grasping at greatness already far gone.
Yet my heart is the sailor who suffers this sea,
Who torments the winds, who tormentors be.
And “Vicious,” they hiss, as if t’were my name,
As violence, once visited, scars both the same.
And respite, retired, rebounds from my breast,
Recanting all glamor and reciting the rest:
“The claret is cruor, dead with decay –
Tempered with torment and teaming dismay.
Should suffering suffice to silence all sin,
Then Hell be without and Heaven within.
Yet vengeance is vanity too vile a vice –
Never neglecting its nature, nor staying its strife.”
And my demands but a dalliance, my will worn away,
I could not unconvince what understanding betrayed.
Author notes
Part 8 of the Whiskey and Lead series.
Comments
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I don't know where Whiskey and Lead came from or where it will end up but each stage is part of an interesting journey. Without back tracking over the others I think this piece is one that challenges the reader to think deeper about life. I haven't come across cruor before but its always good to have a little education each day. The rhythm, rhyme and alliteration carried me through the poem even though I can't claim to understand its full meaning. I like it even though it appears to be on the darker side.
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As we've sort of touched on in the past, Whiskey and Lead is companion piece to the writings of john Connolly, an author specializing in crime fiction living in Ireland. Most of his writing centers around a character named Charlie Parker, who is essentially a tragic figure.
I can't pretend to yet know how things will resolve for Parker, who is also the focus of the series here. However, since W&L will resolve before the Connolly series, it will no doubt be a departure from the fiction that is it's base.
At the core of both W&L and the fictional series is the concept of the transient nature of all things. We move on. From great tragedy, described here in "Beginning" to his futile reconnection with lost loved ones in the "Confrontation" double part, Parker struggles to resolve his inner essence before his time on this Earth runs out.
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