Intruded every rigid shape the certain bounds of breathing candlelight; their contours drown its exhalations. Foreign faces peak atop their bodies fixed in warped expressions, bent toward concealed features reaching back, the candle’s rising breath a savior to suffocating visions veiled, beloved older faces smothered into features of greater faces. These swarming signals trace their lifeless bases, envoys all of still benighted homes, of their stuff but not their form. On some the warmth may lean or flank, and some it rather crown; that moving mirth, though, beats on solid drums preserving nothing, like their kindred brick observers making up this hall, adjacent each to one another, apart in truth to all, that witnessed countless disparate scenes, every stone an angle its own, but constant in their quiet. I see the dust, you thieving fixtures strange before, did dull your colors high to low, so cleared you thus shall be, that dreary blues imagined grey can surface as cerulean, or those sunken sapphires spiraled round the shattered shipwreck, whose creaking hues displayed the deep beside the sharp, that mast garden’s shrouds dissolving vines that chart uncertain bounds; the rooted gems tore the passing water, and distort and ruin it, like briers tearing the excited runner’s clothes, this sight yet buried underneath the cliff on which it rested. From its summit, sea foam windows sunbeam separated I saw, the clashing currents crystallized as fire diffusing curtains chalcedony. Flared, the light became a many broad streamer to the sapphire’s view; the sapphire’s vortex domain refracted back the glow to twisted columns. They scale the sea, are made a trembling frame for every infant window, and dignified them their long-lived begetter. Inspired jewels, for you I verge the precipice, embrace the rays with gentle fingers down, together traced your ceaseless gazes, and joy in lightened foams.
A statue creatures mixed compose, whose windows thieved a tract of candle light to praise their crystal prince alone, but cleared reveal a single lurking feature. Striped and alabaster were its legs, the lines, the greedy heirs, though glimmer and taper, a pattern once I witnessed bright, inverted, high—a land of green ground and green brown and its white sky divided blue clouds; they reclaim the snow and rain, and the pollen feigns its parents’ aim, returning where they came, and here on fallen grass a step impressed some cause to stand, but none adhere although their ground be crushed. There, far, the mountains marched in subtle speeds, the crowd a crown arrayed in cloudlike pearls trickling up to join their kind above. Behind the jagged stony tops were hidden human noise, with sparks and flashes each one bubble’s escort, raised by a science still unknown. Of these powers I asked those nearby, and of mineral metamorphoses none could recall, though they border this continual coronation, and considering this, I concluded the locals experience time in reverse, and could only remember the elements aloft when they crossed the horizon for a slumber eternal. And look, beyond the statue’s ridged legs its torso twinkled, coated in opal feathers sharply cut, their many crinkled vanes a level of faces doubling the opal’s variegated veins. This lavish vision shivers under flames that waver, shards of ice in varied colors form in shapes obscure with countless faces and complex names by little dots dappled. I long ago traversed a forest severed into sections. Winter won one part, another autumn, summer, spring. I walked amidst the speared trees their fiery rime parading, shores of vernal grass along the wintry ran, the line between them fall’s orange, red, and yellow leaves invade and wilt within. As a cross in a glade the four entombing edges touched, and here would summer squirrels skitter, marked their fur the winter berries blue, and hoarfrost feathered hummingbirds enflamed hyacinth nectar; on that golden sunlit tincture every clime imbibed, the grass a million spindles who tangle their shadows to skeins that inside I beheld brilliant grimacing aspects aflicker. I remarked that the trees, for a singular source they strangle their siblings, regardless resulted in canopies mixed, with the creatures mixed their clothes. The statue’s head there rose, and soft and canted spurns the candlelight, its incomplete expression darkness mantles. It frays, its fringe—betrays its station—faces brief the veil so sheer reveals, who speak of distant features. With nothing left to note, I pull my eye and mind from here; more candles line the walls, and each some thing intrudes.
A frame with flowers graven waits, and swift, the tide of fire submerged the smiling vines, the light their tips just sip, and lo, they lie on hills of leaves, their wills instead to swill. My eye climbs it, a stark edge its horizon hides, and finds a portrait scarce in living plants, and high it hung, the dunes the strokes composed were lit askew, the craters etched by brushes pushed the paint’s flesh to bowls the candles overflowed then dried. When full, the colors only lacked in little moons, and empty, streaks of hollow sigils bled the red whole; as traces tailed by beads in cuts and curves, near I to stars most far, and out the earth in arcs departing, night the expansive depth acquires, then the flooding sluice above I swear I may swim through. The subject was a nobleman red in dress in surroundings infernal, fabrics garnet worn, a garnet complex bright faced and dark faced like blush his background. This single color custom once intrigued me elsewhere: I shortly stayed within a cloistered city, their culture to cluster in every affair all alike, so consider the sight of all my aliment emerald emerald couched, or that elements glass both alone and as pieces on things to a fountain that centers the city they pointed, or secretly twisted toward if displaced. I walked around the fountain’s home: a circle basin ringed a road of bricks of glass that homes and stores in circle form encompass, their center facing facets fully glass. Elongated pictures thronged the windows; others’ bodies warped to silent towers blunt in color, yellow shirted children yelling trapped as atlas blotting countries, stargazing inwardly. Within, the road of crystal orbits. Its squares discerned themselves with corners sunlight curves, but still their halos became beneath the shadow junctions of coats and limbs and bodies overlapped, whose margins snap toward the bricks’ bounds, and umbras mute their rounds, some figments clear in shape but not in plan, then deeper walked, and there the fountain laid, its base a fortress meddling shades it walled and stayed. The water, marble plane suffused, though hosted many errant guests, and all before it bowed, the endless quakes every span sustains suspended massive bodies lightly; peaks with faces concave twinned those convex, captured equal pictures thus: a thousand yellow blades a region waved, pallid trails the mountains’ crests descend, around their backs were dim blue cities hidden, and coiling green would band the rest together. Then I, along great engraved marble watchers watched eons in instants: armies gold of legion lives and wars in graves, oceans pale then flood each valleys’ bend, then kingdoms rise and fade by time forbidden, and ancient forests fly denied a tether. In dotted beams a final ring some forest stray, or blade alone, were raised as mist, those beating spheres the rhythmic waves in constant prayer honor. High they traced, a second tier their home; so high above my height that was, the plate pure sunshine poured, and tiers above there laid, above my sight that soared. And that was all with that. I moved beyond the portrait, no new object waiting near, instead a shallow indent.
A frame all smooth succeeds, the sleeping candlelight the frame though fails to hold, so ponds of warmth could percolate and pool atop a door, its bottom stays, though, barren, light its own beneath it flows, thin and low. I enter and find inside a room with many books on shelves, entombed in dying light, the certain bounds of volumes, pages numbered, intrude each other. Ends and covers mix, appearing hence as sites for the dead, discerned by gleaming title jewelry. In focused sight, those jewels I name, who act as obelisks for origins forlorn. The first I see is titled Cymbals of the Sky, a curious phenomenon fortuitously familiar to me, where disks we surmised to be brass would pursue the lonesome roamer, linger, silent, wait until perceived and questioned, further wait, then crash and vanish moments later, echoes ringing every hour that only the roamer hears for weeks. The name I next exhumed was The Gored Gardens, a volume describing an illness where victims would seek fallow meadows, a spade prepared, and without a word or regard for the onlooker, dig with unthinking persistence, and suddenly stop, this whether days or months had passed, and all would report an unbroken pull to some point, and severe interest in the subterranean voice below that disappeared one uncertain moment. And here did glimmer Treatise on the Cygnet Letters, concerning letters shut with seals one signet made, of little swans in early flight, their bodies dressed in water pillar outlines, the open lines uniting air and sea, and know these letters, sent at seeming random, never read the same to two people, but urged panic in each. And further shone the bones adorned of Fairy Fêtes Above the Seas, The Gamboling Snail, Travels and Voyages, The Everlasting Rain of the Coral Plain, Conversations with Deep Earth Fishers, and one I opened to read the opening of, named The Romance of Visions, and its beginning read this way:
Along a forest rode he, headless bard
dressed his horse; the same as he, no helm he wore.
Between the trees was seen an image barred:
serpent segments frame the wood, as great as plains.
Along an ocean rode he, sightings far
eyed his horse; the same as he, not near he looked.
Afar were islets made in shapes bizarre,
glows and grows like flames a mountain found on each.
Along an incline rode he, secret gifts
dreamed his horse; the same as he, not here he loved.
Atop a cliff they reach, its face a rift.
“Fifty nothings maim the shapes and lives there. Forms,
features faceless form to doors, impulsed me
to open every one, defy my duty,
under torments glory. Love repulsed, though,
all pain from want, and sundry queries sunlight
bared, like gates with unknown glyphs, and statues
of unknown gods, and towers sourceless storied,
old. Those bounties varied dreams begat, and
more, actions each allow for actions further,
candles each a deed ignites, revealing
adjacent candles hidden. Journeys ended,
virtues proven, love acquired, are fifty
ends: nothing more. Amidst all steps unsettled
pursuits compose, infinite proliferate:
A foe not smote with blows retorts, a king
in peril offers all, and roads unknown what gait
order? Completed deeds bestow a nothing,
and make the little lit the whole of the room.
I delight in acts themselves, and visions
unfulfilled.” And down they rode, a tomb…
I closed the book, replaced it beside the Conversations with Deep Earth Fishers, and left.
An arch I found beside the door, alike in height and width but deep, and crowned it candles high, their light of bricks made flowing amber, melting, lucent, whose edges light ingests, suspended invisibly in its depth. I invade, I see, a cellar filled with drinks, in rows, diverse in color, wrapped in labels varied. Candles line the walls, those vivified fires shined through every still bottle, on all the liquid dead within. I near them and observe a label. At multicolored mounds of gemstones miners marvel, thin the paper jewels’ part, their faces copper veins would glow through, pulse along, and light the trapping mine, and specks of glass undressed then turned each gemstones’ edge to dazzling, blistering shards. Another followed. Arcs of foam eject here beams of sun, there beams of shadows, and crest the ocean’s palpitating body blue, admired by watching sailors glass and orange eyed. Above the sea a weary orange sky of glass would shimmer, and course and billow distorted mirages across it, all within a frame of paper arched. A few bottles further, from high portrays a label hills of grass which sway in waves of paling wind, and streams embraced these hills, the winds so wide they stroked the streams, and moved its surface, creatures, settlings to life. I note another bottle. A baker’s oven followed, its flame replaced by hollow glass, which filled a gorgeous red abyss that swallowing crimsons and screaming scarlet dapple, exchanging places sleepily, below its cinder bed and clay canopy’s cracks a violent seething burgeons everlastingly. I passed too many bottles too fast to speak on them all, but that moment contained in one blink a thousand icons fit for a life’s span of admiration, and I left the room.
Dying candlelight a distant entryway dot inside of, touching nothing, known alone for themselves, and by themselves. Emerged between the hall’s two rows of candles parallel from the previous room, I see their strength and number dwindling. I near the entryway, my hand against the closer wall skimmed to steady myself. But every step, every finger’s fullness thinned, their brightened, twinkling shape the dark scales and engulfs, and scales and engulfs, and structures thin and pale remained. In truth the entryway accessed a tower. The floor had ended soon within it, and no stairs could one find in whatever direction—only a shapeless depth of countless glowing specks sustaining any fancied silhouette imagined anywhere: spirals, mountains, faces, forests, castles, creatures, battles, patterns, words, parades, plateaus. I stepped across the edge.
yonder, I followed, and beheld a million morrows on my way among this one of now I write: of whistling ramblers on pilgrimages many fathomed; sprites of dirt within deserted rooms; cloudy ridges ibex-capped; palatial paths bent into the blue; those perennials’ canter, for whom still I question my eye; a moon immovable, crowned by stars at morn; however, these entries are for others, keyed behind cues remote to vision. A valley revealed this realized reverie to none but me, the waving grass a vigil seen in vacant stares that last a single step, and so steep was this hill, my descent, I missed. All green was gold, moss now mud, blue blushed and bronzed. A river skimmed or kissed the sky, and sunset bled its head and feet; “like I,” I thought, “it spoke and trod the changing vault, a tributary to sites untouched.” I cleft the sundered bank to center and found the flow bursting, its contours scorched its plains of glass, each gleaming crease, stream of streams, or vein and range held no debris, but flood with flame and fancy. And in that sable flat abyss, where crest and flag surface, were gilded lines without design which herald every country. Once a stag, to stones some soften, antlers stolen away in foreign winds as yawning sails collapse to horns of copper flare from twisting slides strangled to wings who highways wring to distant kingdoms—but jollity’s ring I hear!
As fading clarions blare a day-night halo, sight I wake with sound. Shuffling strings of bubbles chime atop another; they sing a quiet tune, escaping my pursuit in that sudden joyous din. Afar, a many stifled rustle peak a rumble of voices, and I pick out where I desire: “heres,” and “theres,” “nows,” and “thens.” Those tones aflicker, warmth I figure, drawn to near by torch-light figments that flit from frame to frame of grass as tall as I. Brushed aside, the green, again my faithful hall, before this image bows, decrees for me to join, and I an equal thrall, take that familiar fall. I dawn upon the back a crooked arch of homes lustrous ribbons brighten, cracks between unmasked by festive lights the crinkled tapes’ faces fractured, shone as blinding flecks like clouds, the walls a sea that kept a secret archipelago within, each concentric yellow glow a sandy shore below. Along the lonely floodplain I walk, approaching my new map that makes meridians of alleyways and nearby isles of far rays. My touch turned foot to flight, for then I glid amid reflections white, and could digest the sum of things I passed: A broad coast with a marble cape outstretched, on its tip a long-forgotten garden varied candles form; an atoll that ponds dot, and wear as eyelids tapestries of fire and animals all fur; an island mimics diamond—its colors swell the air, and sink the water—people flash across its shoreline, up a depth and down the other; a dune dwindles to a gust and feeds its brothers, both who bud or loom, and from the ocean’s flesh stargazed doors and stairs, who bridge the towers opportune. This plunge in passion hastens, aims to balance nature’s peers with mine, my means to soar at once becomes my burden, scenes by excess speed and closeness stamp the mind. Around the scenery edge I sober, discover the curve of houses mirror another, to act a pillar for the globe exterior, and notice forests parallel the valley where I fell.
The corridor path and walls of stone accept an orange blaze in place of their old pallor. Dancers, cooks, musicians, traders course the aisle, whose width betrays the onlooker, and length withdraws its curve, and dusk, as well, retreats, as if I walked the sun. Its mane a grid two tall had all a door adjacent more, and most had some on watch, in truth there to adorn the pageant they adore. And half the upper stories, stone shields not the front, so stage affairs inside, of dwellers rapt in life, observed though undisturbed; in habit, drama isolate, their performance writ a gate, you witness on this paper which in my rite I perforate, eye a needle height and range but mount a pane to bleed, a glaze received. But those below of my level move instead, imbibe on motion proper. Wordless children run, but noisy still a silhouette fill: a file of mountains, summits volume governed, textures pitch determined. I, no sculpture, reanimate. For romance, I inhabit gaits, the amble my most special. It awaits, the step, and iterates, so the tricklings I seek imitates. Yes, bends I circle, cliffs I climb, with shapes I pace, to stirring race, this world is all a wood. Each tree thus sheaths a glade, a relief from troubles made. Depart to one to part from those conjoined, their cries landforms absorb. About the slope the yells’ sources stroll, which, too, a flatness, hides my exit. Fluent crowds toward me outpour, gush about the boundless village. Rushing residents undulate as slats; their common robes are foliage, soil, and snow in flux. Without, a year they sketch and splay, within, they serve a day. As plants in winter’s wane, some dresses thin percolate, while those opaque eclipse who do portray the same. Their outlines waver, tides, whose foam, where they decline, embolden a rival promontory’s rise, that then recedes and shows to me its prize: a shimmering bead which tops a cauldron broth, and calls me to its spot. A fruit I recognize rests on a board beside, with vines that sprout in gemstone graves a town I visited mines, grinds to a spice, and, cut and added to the pot, the chef prepares ingredients unknown. What regions, records wrapped his store! Resolved to revere these treasures, histories, my march the blizzard blocks, each sleeve like blust’ring sleet divides my view of he I wish to meet. I hike, the bustle brings me leave inside its member meadows, earthen branches furnish plant and vision. Buffeting billows invite me from advancing as sheets attract the waking back to sleep, but through them lie promised sights for whom I make the right incision.
Boiling marks my daze’s end, I greet the toiling man, and ask about the food I know the crystal eaters grow, the shock in me to cross a journey past, and those accounts this journal stores, but he, he shares, acquires his stock himself, the composite dish his chronicle, and no acquaintance with eaters of rock or my fruit. He raised his mix by ladle, elements laid in aimless array on the plate he enumerates. On his voice the first tale floats, of meat endemic to a continent with transparent land. Roots of the plants conducting his step those hunted heavy beasts would graze on, trample stems to membranes. Next he chose to tell of a dell that held the vegetable he cleaned the sauce off, that, unperceived, rearranged, and wiped his fingers ripped with the grottoes where he stayed. Of an herb I learned given to him at a city of accidental function whose civilians live unaware of their fellows, his hand the kitchen towel veils that business soiled today. His pupils gaze to distant elsewheres, catch, imprison me. He confesses the dish is made with water earned in youth; he encountered a basin town in drought that whispered about a never depleting spring beyond the plateau that seized his imagination, someone sent with him to retrieve a portion, since he would not return. They noticed the hollow belonged to a chain, and, his partner’s knowledge mistaken, the spring would gouge its couch then move. They found the spring sputters a mist and drinks a waterfall so clear the sky spat, its mouth too high to identify. Drowned canteens overflowed, and, companion done his deed, strode, drummed, rolled, his part to those expectant. Now alone a trek began anew, and on his breaks, discerned a shadow where the falls originate. Fulfilled by his reward, he left. A fifth, he’d lift—the lampposts’ dew—our current space’s jewel, could not but drift on speech and rumor: his domains dual. By lamps were meant the orbs that hover, border every door, tomorrow’s parade decor: vehicle of their lore without component etched or oral. Each drools a molten pole, that, folded, molds a knoll. Disclosed he, obvious my awe, the abode behind he borrowed. Upper floor of type concealed with window small, a room it had to spare, his offer, I accept.
The interior matched a lit hearth, its arid brick a bark that bound then burnt a double black around each thing. That brutal pitch inflames all colors touched, begets exalting hills on furniture and walls. A table smothered vessels glass with diverse fluids, solutions, tinctures; lattice twins impressed on carpet, distorted contents rove to foreign shelters warped. Vivid rings the darkness charts on pile flat and pale, the liquids’ phantoms rain and freeze and sow a pattern their own. On highlands’ highlights roams a lion darkness beheads, its glitt’ring glare the owl alit on rim of coral shares. Its perch invades the neighbor tundra, shades the fox who stalks, and I, subsequent chaser, the fringe, a haven mine, pervades: ‘tis I my love most mocks. Fraying ropes appoint the wooden tiles my focus’ heir and point upstairs. My trail has steered me there, and thus my exploration ends. A vigil I became, the vacant stairs a final step to see this reverie last.
Arrived at present time, I write, parade I watched tonight. Now I mean to describe this night. What you read before, I inscribed this day, for my energies bayed. My friend, on its coming, summoned me. We stood, with awning overhead, and every entry, alley, someone silent stayed. I remark the entrance opposite where I came was always besides us. The avenue, sourceless fulgur vanished, embraced the world’s usual dim, embraced by it in kind. My periphery the procession, as if my attendance prophesied, penetrates; the floats, in air suspended, propelled by nothing, seem self controlled, and each an orb punctuates, scenes and creatures on platforms invisible under. From a sphere aflame droops tapering flows of honey down a winding groove and loops the soil and green, the shine, those browned, and river’s native glow compound. Illuminated inhabitants of open second floors, beckoned, ignore, and, contrasts deepened, customs continue. Around a mountain side was mantled chalk, along its base lounged a route, a guide for where to walk. In back the track became an incline’s neck, through gaps the sap thickly smeared, its brilliant sphere, magnified draping, deck the crag as glow’ring crescent clusters. Next a closed chest, its lid-cut beams teeth, smog tongues exhale and scuttle, pouring. Elevated above all its predecessors, natives’ contours, midstep, spring across a grass, and loose anklets, a gold webbing below, flagged their legs, horizon’s swallowed sphere a lens that through they flood with flame. I follow their arc, their human figures, boughs they arm in cadence, ling’ring blurs the canopy doused.
Here I write, now so joyful—this gift delighted, filled this byway’s flying and light dreams, with vision tempests; dazzling transformations sift the lighted. Migrants all in form and in place, I, tyrant, flagrant stasis, granted none. Designed to go on morning’s fall, no line to trace provides the aloft sprawl, my cloudy constellations nowhere divined. With fancy, plains would spangle, ranging terrains veil the under ground, my footprints no crease unwound allows. I’ll leave, each promised release, shall them follow instead to cleave this tangle back to sites untouched, and a tribute: what I write tomorrow will be what I pass and see, the path between us set as letters, signs engraved as earth but mean the sky. Where then, returned high, my plan resumes. Ascending the valley to sweep all the field, recounting every step inspired, t’avoid forever emptied beacons. Brimful fantasies await me of countrysides whose suggestions my supple mind, with hope, finds. Hypnotic channels swirling entries reveal: pools unmoving, throned by fairy statues; winking equestrians rooted, of uncertain reality; groves whose gaps present places novel; frozen marshes ibis-trapped; desert bights wherein a city lies; and many leagued are the adventures of whistling ramblers.
I write now, on my way, of a million morrows I beheld, and, where I followed, I wonder…
Bella L’Heureux is 31 years old, previously unpublished, and lives in Quebec, currently working on short poems between prose poems.
