Emergence of a Dream

I.

In me, living flows. My bones
fill up, injure me,
hold the drink of Gods,
and my wit.

Rescue rhyme and revel? This chance
walks in beauty and starry skies.
Meet in tender light one half impaired raven,
yet eloquent, a heart in purple spread wings. Eyes
in the temple on the shore roar around me.

II.

A desert springs won the last drop
in the well as my fainting spirit fell.
Drink the libation: I pour a dream,
and the stars burnt for beacons look
into the volcanos, forests, fire hour by hour.
Faded eyes and useless wings. One thought:

an altar-place. The Universe.

III.

Vitality, a quick root,
with millions of tongues and spirit.
Little objects, extreme in all things:
kingdoms making monarchs’ spirits
kindled — a fever madmen have envied.
Twilight, flickering, ascends to
pleasure I cannot conceal.

IV.

A shadow, bubbling to the skies,
shivering in a palace I saw from
a thousand years of proud towers. Distance, motion,
exhaustless music in lieu of age, Eternity
in dreams.

V.

Courage, the human breath,
a paper kite: onward, soul! Rhyme
brought this world about, a new youth,
the stream to swim and play in.

VI.

Fiction, she gathers a repertory of
facts, contradiction, truth:
a different story, a variety, a lucubration.
Society: a prominent sameness,
a dull likeness of no great promise,
a monotony parade. Break ranks
and leave the masquerade, the ennui.

VII.

Balance the scale with the heart
to rhyme at the sun and stars, mountains roving
into the night, the heart as the moon.

The soul must pause to breathe:
made for loving the light unquenchable,
dwell on earth as livid, living flowers
that bless a flame!

Composed 10/29/12
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This is an erasure poem, constructed from several of Lord Byron’s poems strung together and with much of the original words erased. The idea to do this was inspired by Ravi Shankar’s “Lines on a Skull“, which is an erasure of Lord Byron’s “Lines Inscribed Upon a Cup Formed from a Skull”.

Erasures intrigue me, but I wanted to go in a slightly different direction than Shankar. I needed a but more canvas, hence the multiplicity of Lord Byron’s poems strung together. As I kept erasing, I began to see logical connections emerging and I continued until I felt the idea exhausted itself. So thank you, Lord Byron, and thank you, Mr. Shankar. I love the result and would like to do this again.

“Emergence of a Dream” was constructed from words, phrases, and lines from the following poems:

• Lines Inscribed Upon a Cup Formed from a Skull
• She Walks in Beauty
• The Destruction of Sennacherib
• To Thomas Moore
• Darkness
• Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto III
• Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (There is a Pleasure in the Pathless Woods)
• Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (I Stood in Venice)
• Don Juan (If from Great Nature’s or Our Own Abyss)
• So We’ll Go No More A Roving
• The Gaiour (Unquenched, Unquenchable)

Comments, etc. are welcome.

-Nicole
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