Song for the End of the World - Part 2.


Prologue.


       So
                   We turned our backs to
                        the sun,
       headed outwards
             towards the farther stars,
                   the beacons in the darkness,
                        out towards the horizons
                   of the universe......

Strange forces gripped us.

Weaving intricate patterns through the void,
             electronic eyes scanned our course
fixing their gaze behind us, toward home
             and before us, toward fire, life-
bearing,
             remote in the bright darkness,
       the residual hue from a palette of ten billion colours
crushed into the One.


(Chorus I)

                  I am both younger and older than I appear.

       As life bleeds from me
             the body is divorced from the sky-stretching mind.
One part earth-bound, no escaping the physical
       reality of the body inhabited, orbiting and phasing with
             the moon.
(Ebb and flow, wax and wane)
             Another part, cool as winter
                         sunlight piercing the iceflows
To waken the life beneath,
                   sits motionless but watching.
Both inward and outward this,
             diving to the depths of psyche and stars
To create a wholeness at the centre
                   where infinity meets itself

                               in stasis and in contemplation........

Cool logic clouds the heart,
                   yet is part of the whole.

One.

                   Light years out.....
One came to us, out from the darkness,
moving to a rhythm unheard by us,
             His eyes the hearts of stars.

He beckoned us onward, neutrinos streaming
                                     from his fingertips,
towards the tenuous veilings of a nebula,
                                                             thirteen lifetimes distant.
                         Within was death.

       He rode the tidal stresses, hands outstretched,
                   the right pointing back to the centre of our galaxy,
       The left -
                   fierce energies flaring along the arm -
       along the path we followed,
       while in the hollow of his throat the nebula's pulsar span and
                   winked at us
Through spaces relatively infinite.

And a voice as deep as time echoed through us and beyond us -

       "Kneel to me small beings,
                   for I am fire and air and the wind that streams through
                   interstellar space.
                         I was the first created thing in all infinity,
                   and all the bright things of your multitudinous lives
                         were shaken from my outstretched hands,
                   and in my eyes they rest and are reborn."


(Chorus II)

       Touching
             And trying to separate
                   fundamental dichotomies.......

There are those who can combine
             the outer and inner
Into holistic harmony -

                                    or so they say.

Personally, I am unsure
             as to the validity of such a suggestion.
There must be tension -
                   A thin skating of ice across the divide,
                   supporting spread eagles in the air
                   where coldness turns insubstantially solid -
cracks within the surface of your reality
             through which, if you turn your head, you may see

                   the light of others' glancing through, dangerous and untouched.........


Two.

We paused, uncertain.



(Chorus III)

And I watched from a distance in time, unsure - as always -
             where was my place in this patterning of one small
                   continuum.

If, indeed, I have a place.

They call me Flare.
Amongst those of my own species, I am a rogue talent, a law unheard and
                   unrecognised. And disapproved of.....


Three.

One amongst us, who in a former life had seen visions and
       dreamed dreams of life and glory, awoke from startlement
             and spoke.

"Say on. We do not recognise you."
Creation held its breath

                  The raging fury of fission blinded us
             And his voice screamed in the very essence of our beings.

"You dare not deny me!"

There were those among us who had longed for a newness, a chance to erase
             the earlier mistakes, to live for life instead of death,
                   and they wept in their blindness as annihilation
                         crashed down upon us in crushing
                                           waves,
Their innocence raped, their hope raped, their souls raped as the darkness of
       infinite destruction drowned their light...


(Chorus IV)

Enough


Four.

And suddenly we could see - rainbowed through tears...
             and some
       could not
             believe...

From out of the void leapt a figure.
             We saw it as a lion, a cat so vast it could swallow the sky and roll
                   galaxies underfoot as pebbles.
                               It stood upright and silent
                               in challenge and its mane flowed flashing along the
                   stars too bright to look at,
       and the godfigure screamed once in fury and fled across the sky.


(Chorus V)

       I am not that powerful. However, I believe my appearance was sufficiently startling to both parties to ensure the safety of the weaker.
             Later, my rashness was vindicated..........


Five.

                   Things move too quickly here.
       We move at Earth-normal speeds, and so could only faintly grasp,
                   subliminally, what happened next.
We watched, as best we could, the feline shrink in size,
                   become - somehow - a more... approachable beast,
             that flickered closer to our viewscreens..... and closer.....
Until it stepped through them......

And stood before us,

            

A creature of myth, head high and huge eyes
             flickering, lightning flashes too bright to bear,
                   regarding us with perilous curiosity........


(Chorus VI)

       They were small, stulted in structure and logic, chaotic in their lack of conceptual realisation.
             Nevertheless, I had made my choice...

                         wefting myself into the nature of things I reached into
                         the language they held in common and spoke to them as
                         best I could not mind to mind

      *and all is grey* *goodbye fool* *in your silence* *weep for the young ones*
      *weep for the unborn* *weep....* *it wasn't us it wasn't us it was them we're innocent...*


Six.

       Flare spoke:
             "Your innocence was lost
                   millenia ago
when you decreed your boundaries were sacrosanct.
Inward you looked, measuring your own logic against some mode
             alien to us and unacceptable to yourselves,
       leaving you lost and terrified in the yawning void you saw
as reality. No meaning. No reason. No future.
Creating needless complexities and locking yourselves within
             psychotic strictures,
structures resembling the labyrinthine convolutions of the surface of
             your brains.
There are those who will help you to continue on that path,
Who will come to you with promises of glory, hope, or power,
Which in your self-deception you will acknowledge as your only true desire
And confirm the promisor as your Master and your Lord.
             As you have seen.
                   They lie, of course.

Some have debated long and with asperity if in fact you can be saved,
                   and if - indeed - you should be.
There are those among us who believe that they should intervene this once:
Others who declare that this will set a precedent, and we should remain
             silent and unknown,
Pointing to the time when last a species such as yours evolved
And resolved the dilemma for us by their self-destruction,
             Not-uncommon or significant in the larger scheme of things.

       I am undecided.
I am too far outside my people's frame of reference for my thought to carry
       any weight in the councils of my elders.
Yet I can appreciate the beauty of a many-layered universe, and relish
             diversity in all its forms, see potential where they
                   see defeat.
                               I would not see you die."


(Chorus VII)

I curled in upon myself and wept, again.
             I think I knew you once, but that was long ago, in the
                         innocent days when I knew that my love encompassed
                                     eternity, and I wrapped you within my self and into
                                                 the eternity of my love.
                                                           Now this..... being..... says that we are wrong,
                                                                    and have been, since our time began.
                                                                                Now I am lost.
                                                                                            With you.



This marks the end of the completed section. The following are rough drafts for the continuation of the story....



(Chorus VIII)

       Ah, the courage of this tiny band,
             blindly groping out into their darkness,
                   No mind light or time light to guide
                         them through the dangers yet to come........


Nine.

Flare spoke:

"Once, in my earlier times, I was lost in the dark
and dangerous alleys
             of a dim gloom-ridden city
on a damp and dark-shrouded island
             on a world not of my making.
                   A thrill there was
       of unknown and - possibly - fatal experience
tumbling headlong into synapse and neural reaction,
             sprawling
       freely across the recognised headlands of
prior cognition and diving
             headlong and whimpering
                         into the dark.

Ah, it was EXCITING!

The sound of footsteps in the inner ear,
a narrowly glimpsed shadow,
             a glimmer of eye,
                   a scent of hotfear and a tingling
       at base of brain-stem:
             Swift and silent movement out from narrow darkness
             onto seashore,
where I stood, benumbed and dazzled beyond speaking
             as the borrowed mind attempted to assimilate
the rising of a glinting globe
                   shimmering in the darksunset,
                   the dying day reflected from a thousand
       thousand rivets
as the vast bulk, full a half of the horizon,
                   hauled itself up the perimeter of the sky,
       wallowing beyond the evening clouds, partway between world and moons,
its precious cargo sleeping,
awaiting the command to start
the long, slow, sluggish trudge
towards the nearer
stars.

             No sleek starliner this - rather
a squat and spherical pig,
its grunts and strains faintly audible
through the torpid evening air - yet
             a proud and joyous thing
for the race that bankrupted itself to give it birth,
A thing of beauty
             and of life.

It was the last thing I saw before
             the stalker, forgotten, behind me,
       thrust hard and sharp and stained the sand a deeper shade
with my life, as the shock of death threw me backwards, out from the borrowed mind,
             To land, rebellious, once again,
             in the historians' chamber,
hard on the stoneflagged floor,
             once more to face censure for love of sensation
over the purity of knowledge. Had I not been so
       skilled in their most needful art, I have no doubt
my studies would have been curtailed then and there!"

             He paused awhile, then sighed.

"They tell me I am dangerous to know. I could inflict my presence
             on your company without your approval - or indeed, if I so chose,
                   your knowledge.
                   But I would go with you willingly, for once to take my place
             in history, not simply to watch and record
             timelines and matrices linking past and future.
To go blindly forward, unaware - ah, the wonder of it!".................


Chorus

              Shearing the curve of a sinuous wave,
sine and square motion in equilibrium,
                   we plot parabolic planes through the angles of the void
towards a soulstar
                   known by its brilliance
to be a comprehensive mind,
             and reaching a neuron into this mind unhampered, asked
the reason for disturbance here-and-now............



Joules Taylor, 1992 - (ongoing)

© 1998 Joules Taylor (writing as Flare)


Song for the End of the World Pt 1

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