Monday, March 10, 2008

a mercenary's tale

It has been another busy week, and I have to dig up some old stuff again. I have posted this piece before, very early on in this blog. I must have read too many fantasy stories when I wrote this.

I wrote this poem about a soldier telling his love about his adventures. It is an imaginary tale but it could have happened in any civilization, any war.

I will try to get back to my normal rants soon. :)


a mercenary's tale


you sat by the steppe's fire
absently stirring the flaming embers
as sparks crackled
in the cold wintry night
you sat listening , intently
to my tales of slaughter
i and my horse-sword
how i rode with the devil's forces
i knew you did not blame me
why i sold my sword for money

the Central Plains i rode
are bleak and barren
vultures & wild hounds picked on
diseased bones
a hundred years of war
the reasons long murky
as the ashes that swirled
between the fiefdoms
kings and dukes and serfs
fell like scythed hay
ragged troops plundered
flaming arrows torched
ravaged villages
the dead left as they fell
amid ruined harvests..

you sat listening intently
the light of the fire bouncing off
your liquid eyes
the glow on your face
more beautiful than dawn's light.

June 1991
revised 08.03.2008
*********


a mercenary's tale


images and poem © cheong lee san ( dsnake1 )

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11 Comments:

Blogger floots said...

great combination of the brutal and the romantic
thank you

12 March, 2008 15:04  
Blogger dsnake1 said...

floots,
thank you. :)

13 March, 2008 00:18  
Blogger polona said...

a bleak and desolate tale with a flicker of romance...
love it

13 March, 2008 00:50  
Blogger dsnake1 said...

i was looking for contrasts here. :)
thanks, polona.

14 March, 2008 00:20  
Blogger S.L. Corsua said...

I could imagine the gradual shift in the soldier's tone, the softening in his eyes, as the look of wonder in his companion's face takes him back to the present, to the deepening bond of 'their' moment. ;)

14 March, 2008 03:35  
Blogger Deborah Vatcher said...

Annihilation then dawn, rebirth. The contrasts are physically felt--the cold, the heat. Above all, the power of love to bear through the listening, to hear the story of trauma.

14 March, 2008 07:07  
Blogger dsnake1 said...

soulless,
i like your interpretation of this story. :)
the narrator is weary of all these wars but it is what he is doing that's keeping him, and his companion alive.

deborah,
thanks for your comments.:)
the power of good, and love, will always triumph. i wanted to show in this piece , as Soulless has said, a gradual shift in the soldier's tone. the moments with his loved one are what he lives for.

15 March, 2008 00:11  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I like the various moods in here. His intonation. Very vivid.

18 March, 2008 09:26  
Blogger dsnake1 said...

thank you, gautami. :)

18 March, 2008 23:06  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

stark w/ a glimmer of romance
I like your drawing!

Artistically,
Gel { * * }

21 March, 2008 17:35  
Blogger dsnake1 said...

:)

thanks, GEL!

21 March, 2008 22:51  

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