First Canto
The first canto of a piece of an as-yet-untitled piece writing I've gone back to many times, but never quite got to the end of.
Over the years I’ve gone back and forwards on writing poetry. Sometimes I’m in a mindset to write, work and re-work and perhaps even publish things. Other times I’ll go a year without so much as a haiku leaving my pen.
This work is one I’ve tried both as prose and as poetry and never really been happy with. The idea was for it to be a kind of modern poetic epic, with Lucifer and Michael meeting and talking on the evening before the battle of Armageddon.
It’s got elements and phrases I really like, and others I’m still not happy with even on their fifth revision. I also had a lot of images and ideas I wanted to include, rather than a real narrative arc. It’s always interesting to go back to older works and look over them with fresh eyes, and as my substack is dedicated to writing about a wide range of things I felt I’d share the first canto here.
I tried to have a structure following through and the idea that Lucifer would speak with greater rhyme and flow whilst Michael would be rather terse and staccato.
I have another section in much the same state of readiness that I may publish for Easter.
Every life has its birth and death,
Each cycle its rise and fall
All legends have their truth
And each myth its final verse.
Man lives in measured time
As ever he has
Yet time is not the measure of all;
Things live beyond it.
Brothers’ love frames our story
Its place the final plane
Dated to the end
Of the age’s arc.
The brothers stand on point commanding,
Tomorrow’s war arrayed below.
The field is split
By the hill’s stone prow.
The blood-bound meet,
Under a cape of stars
Which is echoed by their armies’ lights
Rooted to the valley.
One light, one dark.
Two so different are seldom seen.
The weary warrior yoked by fate,
A bright-burning prodigy.
Morgen was the first to speak,
Honey hued and bell clear.
He was tall and finely crafted,
An icon of a golden age.
Men hung upon his words
Fish, hooked in the sea.
To his brother he posed the question
“Why, still, must you fight me?”
“We’re the last, frater,
Our kin long faded.
We’re not bound,
Nor to battle fated.”
“Michael, Michael” he implored
“Don’t set upon this course.
Your will can see peace restored;
This needn’t end in force”
Scarred face with jaw set,
Laconic answer framed;
“My duty is to fight,
As long as men stand.”