Thursday, November 15, 2012

Orpheus and Eurydice

The road wound white
Through the darkness
Running before me
Running behind me
A silver thread
Leading me home
Life before me
Death behind me

On either side
Cliffs of stone
Hung like clouds
Veined with blood
Lakes of tears
Glimmered softly
Huge and old
As human sorrow

And she walked behind me, her steps as light as rain
Her grave clothes crumbling around her
Stumbling on the path like a woman in a dream
And sometimes the blood waking in her bruised flesh
Hurt her, and she moaned, and I heard her
Crying

I fixed my gaze
Forward always
As my longing
Reached behind me
How I longed
To comfort her
How I longed
To hold her close

At last I saw
The dayworld light
Bright before me
Like a blessing
And in my joy
I turned to speak
In my joy
I looked behind me
 
For one moment I saw her face, her eyes as dark as rain
Her grave clothes crumbling around her
Standing on the path like a woman in a dream
And then the blood cooled in her bruised flesh
And I stood alone on the lip of the world
Crying

My song after that was a world of mourning
They said that the trees woke to listen
And that all living things ran to hear my voice
But I was playing only for the dead to hear me
And the dead were deaf, alone in their shadows, 
Crying
 
 
From Night Songs, a music theatre work commissioned by Bell Shakespeare's Mind's Eye.