Poet’s Muse

 

We are never quite done

 with the gloomy castle

 it shadows all our domestic hours

  from birth through the sapling years

 and on.

 

 It stands on a steep embankment

 surrounded by a thick, dark forest

 and from its battlements

      unlucky souls observe in the distance

 a glass-green ocean

 a starry firmament.

 

 Below, in the icy castle grounds,

      huddle mournful souls

 freezing and forgotten by all

      but their closest kin—

 a melancholy place

 but nothing eternal to it.

 

 The sun that rises elsewhere

       will not penetrate this structure

 hidden as it is, under northern mists,

 wizard spells and optical illusions

 of light and dark.

 

Though the city is your new mistress

        you may encounter this castle

 in dreams

 animated by an almost human moon,

 the eerie chatter of small

 flitting things—not exactly bats—

 and damp torches burning tentatively

 on, towering ramparts.

 

 And you may encounter stone griffins

  or other frozen phantasmagoria ,

  and ponder why it is

 that you always approach Her

  in the dark

 with frost stinging your skin

 and the air painful to breathe.

 

 And there’s never any wind

 it’s always so still and ponderous—

 like a painting:

 an ocean of souls (anticipating fire)

 ominous clouds (dull and lifeless)

 and

 the muddled heavens

 so vast, so domed, so utterly silent.

***

Ian Irvine is an Australian-based poet/lyricist, fiction writer and non-fiction writer. His work has featured in many Australian and international publications, including Fire (UK) ‘Anthology of 20^th Century and Contemporary Poets,’ (2008) which contained the work of poets from over 60 nations.His work has also appeared in a number of Australian national poetry anthologies, and he is the author of three books and co-editor of many more (including Scintillae 2012, an anthology of work by over 50 Victorian and international writers and poets). He currently teaches writing and literature at Bendigo TAFE and Victoria University (Melbourne) and lives with fellow writer Sue King-Smith and their children on a 5 acre block near Bendigo, Australia.
 
Links related to his work are as follows:

robin@artvilla.com
www.facebook.com/PoetryLifeTimes