Dark-Adapted Eyes

Thought and Memory, we are both one and two.

Thursday, January 18, 2007

Ravens 016

at the portals of the mind
we are keepers of the gate
though the seeing eye be blind
and the hearing undermined

though the hearts of man in hate
seek the rule of sword and spear
and their voices denigrate
while their wills will abdicate

still we guard the true and dear
and the artfully designed
for the end of things draws near
those who see and those who hear


Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Rearguard

Huginn: I was thinking.

Muninn: That is what you have always been.

H: In retrospect.

M: Now, that sounds like encroachment.

H: Must you keep interrupting?

M: You know something? It is thought that interrupts memory, and not the other way round. All the time.


Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Vanguard

Huginn: This is what we were made for. He sent us ahead; they all did. We were dispensable and indispensable in the dispensability of it all. Who cared that we were blackened by the fall of the General of Heaven? Who cared that our eyes burned with flame engraved by the sword of the Archangel?

Muninn: Hush, dear. I remember it all as if it were yesterday. We share the same pain, and it is unthinkable.

H: But I must think about it; there must be meaning in it. Why were we made to suffer? Why was it always we who had to be the first out, the first in, the first up, the first down?

M: I ask you, my love, forget. Vengeance is his, he said to us all in ages past. His is the vengeance, his the glory.

H: (bitterly) You of all, you of us all, you have forgotten. We are his, and we are his vengeance. He said it. He meant it, and it was always we, the vanguard, the vengeance, the harbingers of wrath.

M: Ach, of all things, of all the useless things to remember... oh, my love, my love.


Monday, January 15, 2007

Ravens 015

love was forgotten
we packed in a rush
he said follow them

can thought really love
is memory true
he said follow them

we had no time to
sort out our feelings
he said follow them

we saw them suffer
one son killed, one cursed
he said follow them

the millennia died
we were both tired
they had died long since

it was never us
love was not for birds
all his love was theirs


Sunday, January 14, 2007

Hades

Huginn: It is all dark, even when it is bright. Its structure is formality, formalism, formaldehyde. Its function is form.

Muninn: Why is the walker here? I do not remember him enjoying such places.

H: I think he is brooding about something.

M: I hope something is not brooding about him.

H: The underworld is a necessary evil, but it need not be shoddily designed.

M: Ah, yes. The walker has always been broody about shoddy.


Saturday, January 13, 2007

Styx

Huginn: I always thought a straw would break the camel's back, that it would be an arrow in the wind, that the small and slender would win in the end.

Muninn: I remember that brick and clay, cement and glass, the things of earth made civilisation out of dirt.

H: But there is always something in between.

M: I recall it withstood the big bad wolf a bit more than straw.

H: It's a dark tale, and a sad one, I think.

M: It is the story of a river and a bundle of wood.


Friday, January 12, 2007

Ravens 014

thought and memory
memory and thought
one comes from nothing
one is for naught

fear and wondering
wondering and fear
one tells a story
one is unclear

hell is despairing
despairing is hell
thought and memory
will never tell


Thursday, January 11, 2007

Acheron

Huginn: I see a long dark road ahead. The gargoyles festoon the cathedral, and it will not be easily cleansed.

Muninn: It has been a long dark road behind. There is always hope ahead.

H: Is there always hope ahead? Is the best always the last of life?

M: In all recorded memory, only one thing lacks a future hope.

H: I think I know what it is. It had something to do with an Italian sorcerer.

M: Yes. Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch'entrate, he said. "Abandon hope, you who enter here."


Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Cocytus

Huginn: I think he is doing that which seems traitorous.

Muninn: I remember when all thought he was such. We spent much effort persuading the neutrals that he was not.

H: I think he is now a traitor to his ideals, but he does not see it that way.

M: I remember he has never thought of himself as such. His ideals shift, but not as sand. Rather, they erode, as obsidian or as the basalt of a pyroclastic flow.

H: It is a long time since I visited the Ninth Circle. Rumour had it that when Pluto left the ranks of the major planets, the Ninth Circle vanished forever.

M: It is still there, waiting. Cold it is, and dark, and its ways are four. And for.