{"sf1_id":1722725,"sf2_id":"rm8dAym0","title":"A Far Green Country","author":"Rob MacWolf","words":857,"posted_at":"2021-05-28T00:26:00.000Z","tags":["Iambic pentameter","Poetry","blank verse"],"url":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1722725-a-far-green-country","original_url":"https://sofurry.com/s/rm8dAym0","image_url":"https://cdn.sofurryfiles.com/submissions/thumbnails/db/08/db08c750-5927-46a6-a491-b996f0403466","description":"#30 of Ragnarok\n\nI wrote this as I was finishing Ragnarok. While it was mostly based on just the experience of walking around a public park that had once been the yard and garden of an eccentric millionaire's mansion, it quickly became clear that it was a very minor sequel. So I'm putting it in this folder.","content":"How often have I dreamed of such a place?\n\nHow often have I seen those emerald fields,\n\nAnd in that dream, forgotten that I dreamed,\n\nThat I would wake, had woken, and my life\n\nDissolved into a peaceful deja vu\n\nThat cannot be remembered? I can see\n\nThe grass, the mossy walls, the maple shade.\n\nI smell the tall, slow, sleeping pines, the sand\n\nPacked soft around the fountains. I can hear\n\nThe wind among the treetops. I can feel\n\nThe soft brush of soft grass, and the cool glow\n\nOf dew washed dark earth beneath my bare feet.\n\nYet no name can I summon, nor can say\n\nWhy I should cling to memories of these.\n\nBut cling I do. If I should ever see\n\nThat place in this world or in any next\n\nI will know it, as surely as I know\n\nMy father's face, and swiftly wandering\n\nGo in among the gardens, and get lost.\n\nI'll sleep beneath wide, sighing linden boughs\n\nThat dye the sunlight like stained glass, and find\n\nPaths carved into the malachite hillsides\n\nLeading from grassy terrace to orchard,\n\nLeading from arcade to dim aspen grove,\n\nLeading from ferny grotto to a bridge\n\nAbove the water-lily covered pond.\n\nUpon this hillock, through the broken hedge,\n\nI will see rolling pastures so bright green\n\nThey must illuminate in the darkness.\n\nFrom that serpentine-marbled marble shrine\n\nBetween the twisted roots of a camphor\n\nTaller than church steeples, I will follow\n\nThe outflow of the ice-cold fountain down\n\nThrough waterfalls that nature thought, but he\n\nWho built this garden made, through slippery banks\n\nCovered with sponges of thick moss, until\n\nIt reaches the rock pool where stand the long,\n\nAsleep green fingers of the willow trees.\n\nAnd in an orangery, arches open\n\nTo breathe the warm eternal summer breeze,\n\nI will find on the table a paper\n\nThat says \"This place was perfect. But no more:\n\nWe stand in peril. Save us, as you saved\n\nWhole worlds before.\" No signature. Wary\n\nWill I go out again. The garden now\n\nSeems welcoming not like invitation\n\nBut like a trap. The paths have become tracks,\n\nThe bamboo fences possible ambush,\n\nAnd I am painfully aware how much\n\nMy bare chest, my blue shorts, my bright red hair\n\nStand out against the ever-deepening green.\n\nI look at what I pass as if to weigh\n\nIt's value as the setting of a duel:\n\nThis maze of dark slate stairs, around planters\n\nOf spindly budding maples would do well\n\nIf I could keep the high ground, or that bed\n\nOf briars so green that they are almost black\n\nCould keep a foe from moving. By the time\n\nI reach the garden's edge, I am ready.\n\nMy breath is slow and unstoppable like\n\nThe engines of a rocket. My muscles\n\nAre cool and loose and eager to be used.\n\nMy senses are so razor sharp that when\n\nI look out the iron gate into the woods\n\nThat wrap around the garden to the east;\n\nThough wild, still tended, still groomed and kept clean;\n\nI see what I must do. And I must laugh.\n\nA sapling apple tree, under a branch\n\nDropped from one of the rangy oaks is pinned\n\nAnd bent against the ground. It is alive,\n\nBut cannot grow like that. I wonder if\n\nThe sudden surety that comes is from\n\nThe place itself, or only as one knows\n\nThe things you know in dreams, and if there is\n\nTruly a difference. Regardless, I heave\n\nThe fallen limb off of the young apple:\n\nIt springs back, soon enough. It will not grow\n\nQuite straight, but it will flower, it will fruit.\n\nAnd its crookedness will in years to come\n\nMake it the more itself. I fetch water\n\nFrom the small marble font just at the gate\n\nTo rinse the mud off of its leaves. The branch\n\nIs lying discarded off to the side\n\nAnd something tells me that this will not do.\n\nI drag it to a tree with silver bark\n\nAnd small golden flowers, that I can't name,\n\nAnd lean it up against the stock. A trip\n\nA little deeper in the woods turns up\n\nA few more fallen branches, which I lean\n\nAround the tree like a stand of muskets.\n\nI gather rough fieldstones from the deep woods\n\nAnd place them circled close around the roots.\n\nAnd then I look, considering. It is\n\nRough, yes, but not unfitting so, and I\n\nKnow not what more there is for me to do.\n\nSo will I wander back. The gardens have\n\nA look of early morning, and the note\n\nIs different now, now it says but \"Thank You.\"\n\nThen through the orangery will drift a breeze\n\nSuddenly cool and grey amid the green\n\nAnd smelling of the sea. Then I will know\n\nWhat wind to follow when I go my way.\n\nYet will I linger here a little while,\n\nTo see the flowers bud, if not to bloom,\n\nTo explore more of the deep wooded paths,\n\nTo rest me in the emerald colored shade\n\nNot caring yet if following that breeze\n\nWill lead me to awaking, or to death.\n\n  \n  \n\n","series":{"name":"Ragnarok","previous":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1722657-ragnarok-epilogue.json"}}