Friday Fiction: Technically a Poem

BLUE TEARS FALLING IN A CRYSTAL SKY

 

Lost stars tossing on an endless ocean;

Wild waves breaking on an empty shore;

West wind blowing through a ruined tower,

In dusty hallways and forgotten doors.

Every winter there's a new spring coming.

Summer's a myth and we don't know why.

Every winter there's old beauty dying,

And blue tears falling in a crystal sky.

 

A witch is weeping in the misty highlands;

A druid's dreaming in an endless wood;

A saint is sleeping under the altar;

They'd come here to help us; I wish they would.

This summer is seeming, but winter is with us.

Autumn is on you when things start to die.

When spring comes again, will it find we've been faithful?

There are blue tears falling from a crystal sky.

 

Weary and restless, it's too far we've wandered.

It seems such a long way to turn back home.

But we've walked round the earth, and come back full circle,

So now home is ahead, and we'll no more roam.

Every winter there's a new spring coming;

It's there for the winning if we'll only try.

Every spring there's new beauty birthing,

And laughter ringing in the crystal sky.

 

I wish I had dated this poem. As it is I can only guess I wrote it in the late ‘90’s; at the time I was listening to a lot of Van Morrison and The Call and (I think) Loreena McKennitt and U2 and Bob Dylan in his more enigmatic vein. It is mainly a handful of fantastic images and a kind of struggling optimism; it includes the conceit (used both in Chesterton’s Manalive and C. S. Lewis’ The Pilgrim’s Regress) of coming back to a happy beginning by taking the long way round. It is the journey that restores or enhances returning ‘home.’ Is the ‘crystal sky’ supposed to be Heaven or merely a ‘return to the innocence’? I probably couldn’t have told you then and I certainly couldn’t tell you now. It seems to me mainly a kind of tinkling, vaguely portentous verbiage in the form of a pop song. My friend Alan Peschke has since set it to music and published it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGTgrFlaDoY&list=RDwGTgrFlaDoY&start_radio=1

I sing it to a different tune in my head.