Ballade of Three Birds
#25 of poetry
I used to write so many ballades, you guys.
Not ballads. Ballades, it's a specific form. Look up Francois Villon. But short version, it's a form where you have three rhymed eight line verses that all end with the same line (or half of a line, in this case,) and then a four line "envoi" usually addressed to someone called "prince" that also ends with that same line and ideally should recontextualize it.
The morning miles of liquid cold that hang between the spheres
Will bear you up forever, but will not veil your eyes.
The clear wind and the clouded and the misted wind that mirrors
Will show you every corner of the old hills that they clean.
The scattered starlights show you what futurity will bring
For only you can climb into the most transparent skies.
And when the vengeance flames consume the world beneath your wing
Your eyes alone will pierce the smoke, and that is what I mean.
The shadowed miles of thunderstruck that dog your silent path
Will rain percussive fury down, but will not muss your plumes.
And you will be the herald and historian of wrath
For you alone have ridden it, and watched it intervene.
The hurricane ineffable is hidden least to you,
Have you not seen it banish ever necromantic fumes?
When towers tremble with the chaff, your memory is true.
At least you'll know why I was here, and that is what I mean.
The trailing miles of ivy grey that drag upon the oak
Will camouflage your ashen clothes, but not your promised song.
Behind the bare of leaves there lives what every singer spoke,
So if the boughs, like you, are black, your voice can grow them green.
Ten hundred tunes combine in you at every note you call.
Ten thousand songwrights live again, so therefore live you long.
Then when the ivy crumbles down, and all my anthems fall,
One singer will remember me, and that is what I mean.
Prince of the earthbound multitudes that see clouds from below,
Your wearied world is windless still, and that is what I've seen.
The tempest times will tear it down, and that is what I know.
And you will find your voice again, and that is what I mean.