Revivification

Dedicated to Brittany McLeod
November 26, 2004

Revivification

Ominous twilights thickened day by day,
The stifling sky was heavily beclouded.
The nightly crescent wouldn't wink my way;
Its pungent tears sank away uncounted.

The frail rays of light were rather rare —
They hardly ever broke through the miasma.
The path of life grew ever so bare,
Apparent happiness was only a phantasma.

Many a night was I absorbed into deep thought:
I wished to comprehend the life around me.
Some absolute and perfect world I always sought,
But trifling was the upshot... not astounding.

Then, after several fiascos it was clear:
The book of life was not to be revised.
My baffled eyes could not but shed a tear —
The real morals were behind the times.

The dusk arrived before the dawn awakened,
The starless sky gave off a spiteful stillness,
Grasshoppers' chirr grew weak, then slowly fainted,
As though nature were afflicted with an illness.

No sign of life or any living creatures,
No sound heard, nor any movement seen,
Lamentable and sad was that depiction —
The future that nobody had foreseen.

Bereft of hope... deserted... even doomed...
Such seemed to be the world without you!

Was to be continued...

Background Story

The gradual withering of the world, the demise of nature, the disappearance of all living creatures – all these horrible unthinkable things depicted in this poem are an attempt to imagine what life would be like if love ceased to exist. Whether love does actually exist or it is only an invention of humankind in search of meaning is irrelevant – the mere concept of love continues to inspire people to pursue their endless struggle to find their own piece of happiness in this broken world.

This girl, if only for a fleeting moment, was my small piece of happiness. The unrequited love was pure, passionate and beautiful, but, not unlike many other young lovers, I made the fatal mistake of loving her to the exclusion of all else – a metaphysical and an impractical way of love, which is the very reason to which I attribute its eventual downfall.

Both the title of the poem and the final couplet represent hope. It is a belief that love can heal us and mend us. It is a conviction that love can sweep over the broken world that is reduced to ashes and ruins and restore it – raise it from the dead – and plant the seeds of eternal bliss in a blissful eternity, if only for a fleeting moment.

As the endnote states, the poem was left unfinished. The second logical part of the poem was intended to portray a revivification, but no revivification ever happened...