The Waking World, Fytte VI

An Epic Fairytale in (mostly) Sonnet Form. Chapter 7- The Mirror'd Mere

The Mirror’d Mere

So on I stagger’d through these countless caves
And many wound’rous sights unseeing saw;
Gave heed to many utt’rances deprav’d
Whisper'd by those that did about me crawl.
At length, I found a chamber wherein lay
A perfect pool of water smooth as glass
And thirsty, rush’d I forward to the place,
Intent on slaking my thirst with a draught.
But as I bent me down to take a drink,
A shout broke from my lips in sharp surprise,
And stagger'd I back from the water’s brink,
For my reflection there had caught my eye.
The face that from the well gaz’d back at mine
Could scarce be recogniz’d as human kind.

The shape reflected there was so deform’d
That first I thought it was some ghost or wight;
The flesh was pale, the features sad and worn,
The downcast eyes were orbs or rolling white.
And as I gaz’d, a stranger thing occur’d,
For my reflection rose up from the pool
And hover’d o'er the waters undisturb’d
Like some graveyard spirit or undead ghoul.
The sunken cheeks suck’d in against the skull,
The mouth hung open in a silent scream.
This mirror, then, had shown to me my soul—¹
a crippl’d, broken, dead and dying thing.
I fled the vision in that aweful well,
But knew that I could not escape myself.

At length I found along my twisting road
Other sojourners sharing in my plight,
All pris’ners to our necromantic foe,
And few I found without the serpent's bite.
All of us nurs’d some secret, private wound,
Some tumor fest’ring in our very soul,
And in that place bereft of sun or moon
We let our var’ious cancers swell and grow.
I look’d upon these broken human shapes,
Like that which in the pool I there had seen,
And I resolv’d to love each fallen face
But not for the beauty that once had been,
Nor yet for what, redeem’d, they still could be,
But because ev’ry one look’d just like me.

The mirror'd mere had shown to me a truth
That I already knew somehow within.
Though I had left and fled my former tomb,
I had not slain my tomb or all my sin
ravel’d.² And still I walk'd in darkness deep
As though I never left that painted cave.
I knew that my hubristic self-deciet
Had traded out the coffin for the grave.
So here I walk’d, a putrid rotting corpse;
I could not hate me and remain alive.
And so I took what seem'd my only course—
To love the Dark and in this way survive.
And so I chose to love the fruit of Hell,
For could I not, I could not love myself.

1. See the third stanza of Chapter Two.

2. This line, when read aloud, can be read phonetically as, “I had not slain my tumor, all my sin ravel’d.” Meaning “I had not slain my tumor, the place wherein all my sin is tangled.” Both this and the reading found in the written text are intended.