On a night in my youth,
in an age distant from my aged self
before I had become acquainted
with the mythology of my own blood,
before I knew my life
was ruled by the Moon, incrementally
shrouded behind pale wisps
of the ghostly breath of an unseen demon's
clouds, with no stars illuminating
the presentiment of a deathly sky,
the color of a sickly bruise,
I stood beside a silent river-
my compatriots at my side.
The frivolous nature of youthful conversation,
stuttered and gleaming and fluid,
song-like and devoid of substance, yet
overfull with symbols that would devour us in time.
I was already haunted by a predilection
for solitude, but the spirit was not yet crystallized,
I was not yet irremediably drawn
into the lonely kingdom of my maundering.
How was I to know those princes
who had plucked me out of terrible tides
would one day become strangers
with peculiar motives and flashing eyes?
And the Moon, barely half its height, mocked me
as if to say "behold the deathly
night of your youth, behold the selfsame
darkness and the fragrance of demon's breath
and the muted stars falling adrift!"
What was I lonely for then and what
am I lonely for now? What prevented me
from loving the people I knew?
It was always the adumbral sky
the silent motion of the water and the Moon.
