Troubadours

Julie Takata / V Mag at UVA 

That silty road ahead

looks to be fine fabric

in the setting sun.

Hidden gravel and stone

lay upon the path

and my bare feet

weep crimson sleek,

but all I can do is hope,

soft like warm honey:

the Troubadours’ joy.

Night poured into the sky,

flooding it with those bright grains,

spit out

like shells and sand

from sea.

The waning light swims up ahead

upstream to the west.

My eyes can’t see

anything beyond the distant blur:

the Troubadours’ dance.

The moon has cast trees in sheer white: A

silhouetted forest,

forming pitch-black barriers. Nature caged me in this

roughened path.

It smells of bitter metal. Iron bars

of blood,

a scent that follows and lingers, so why turn back?

Continue on.

I escape to my mind; I think of sweet summer sweat:

the Troubadours’ festival.

I catch whispers of music ahead.

Fluted tunes, clapped rhythms

beckon to me: the siren song,

promising joy, enticing me.

They hum like the gods’ choir;

who’d be the fool not to follow?

The incessant ringing of those

midnight crickets and cicadas

melt away in the cacophony of

the Troubadours’ song.

Finally!

The Troubadours have come!

I danced, I danced, I danced

I sang, I sang, I sang.

Imbibed to a stupor

and a harvest’s meal in my stomach,

my delight shakes the earth beneath. Instruments and

song drowned the world; even the cicadas were silent

to listen to their tunes.

The sky’s candles were then snuffed, smokeless,

and the near-dream had been washed clean, their

march away fading like my heartbeat. Cicadas

began their grating chirp again, a poor

imitation of the Troubadour’s song.

I rose from slumber, my mouth dry

cotton, tasting baby’s breath

and death and death

hurts no more than

the Troubadours’ leave.

The road is bound only by the horizon,

I’m lost, I’m lost, I’m lost

in this everlasting evening.

I’m too far in to turn back.