Procession
The morning ammil had not thawed
after the rain and breeze all night
cold valleys inland turned to white.
Yet, under silence buried, flawed
dreamers to bliss aspiring walked
with careful steps. Deprived of sleep,
that former rabble, lulled by deep
and worried thoughts, who had not talked
for ages, babbles to itself—
in its ambagiousness forgets
the old abysm and the delf
this beauteous orb ever begets.
This process turns both ways: it self-
engenders and proliferates.
(Their voices lowly vapor blow;
their murmurs can’t reverse the flow.)
Their chains abhorred, their chains beloved,
their chains accepted nonetheless,
then torn asunder in distress,
they swallowed woes the world had shoved
into their empty shells of minds.
Let echo bells in deep the vale—
resound the knells—recall the stale
sinners of sadness to where winds
(recoils) the blackness of the tide.
The sources tapped for life were marred
when vices sank in them, and pride
as virtue raised at leisure tarred
the saintly shame until it died,
until the tamed unsouled were charred.
(They trudge, alone in their own hearts,
toward the earth, where it all starts.)
Live Streams
Walking amid the memories in clouds
(the sinuosities of inspiration)
the old, familiar smell of desperation
receding slowly while the rain enshrouds
my livid shape, I try to find the stain,
the remnant of the mark you left on me.
It’s obvious now it’s wearing off. A tree
stands, dolent, there; its leafage twists in pain.
The obloquy will pass, but not the shame.
Embrace abjection, dear, and raise your eyes.
The sycophants surrounding you when dies
the absolute, the honor of your name,
will drown in their own filth, be cast away.
You’ll lose remembrance of your sourest tears;
your swollen scars will be erased, for here’s
coming annihilation and dismay,
and they will meet their second death. You know
that scene already, you read and rehearsed it.
The summer loneliness that brought and cursed it
is perfect and unbearable, a woe
of episodic laughter. Then, a cold
and glistening void will follow the fire,
this newly pregnant emptiness will sire
an idyll, frail and ready to be told.
***
I watched again these memories recorded,
these specks of happiness in vastitudes
of angst. They softened my own aegritudes.
Familial dignity, and nothing sordid.
The lanky tree will sprout anew, God willing,
although amarous waters soak its roots,
and poison them till they’re reduced to soots.
Your treasure was uncovered through blood-spilling.
***
“Live Streams” is an excerpt from Romain P.A. Delpeuch’s new novella, Hypnagogia. You can purchase the book from Terror House Press here.
Romain P.-A. Delpeuch was born in south-west France, where he still lives. He is the author of Hypnagogia.
