Song Before Daybreak

From 2008 - enjoy.


You say it’s the ghost-boy’s smiling face you haven’t seen for years?
Well, here are the murmurings of those voices I’ve always wanted to hear.
We’d prick up at other phantoms, drifting beneath the purple skies,
But we’ve been there and back. Tonight, let’s close our eyes.

I’m playing your favorite record, dear; it’s old, and scratched, and worn,
But you may catch the lilies’ scent from before the petals were torn -
The buttery laughter of the child we found up in the tree;
The aching juice of the sun-ripe fruit he tossed to you; to me.

He’s given us this terrible strength, the one that scorns what seems
(I’m no longer afraid to sleep - how good it is to dream)!
When I trust his silence, my spine’s against his palm,
And I feel joy beat wildly beneath this measured calm.

We must not boast, for we both know that this glimmer is weak,
Yet a glimmer it is, and it winds on like a small, silver creek -
And it’s he who’s given this to us - to keep us through the shades,
But for that silver, I’ve come to love the darkling balustrade…

Yet all is as it should be, and all is as he planned;
The final knot will loosen by naught else but his hand,
Fire, wind, water will come, and rack us o’er and o’er,
But we’ll be looking up - we’ll heed nothing, anymore -

And Time - he fights against us, but if we squint just so,
All will burst a-fire before the cock’s last crow:
The blindness will come easier, then; the wondering will be sweet -
And for a breath, we’ll walk through marble halls on golden feet.


Olivia Meldrum 2010