11-22-2025, 08:21 AM
"Pale Fire"
Shade forged his truth from pale mothlight,
revised his life in the quiet of night.
Wrote meaning to his untold ache,
and laid ghosts to rest in soft iambic.
He chased butterflies on bent paths,
taper fluttering in grief's draught.
Kinbote sought his kingdom there,
in footnotes manic he scrawled a realm on air.
Conjured king, killer, glass crown,
and anoited himself upon an exile's throne.
Now Zembla gleams, absurd and dire,
her heraldic towers lit by stolen fire.
Across the parchment battleground they roam;
A dead man’s soul, a madman’s fevered tone.
The poet built a pale reliquary;
The madman took it for commentary.
The poem moves through both, defies their visions,
and finds its own truth between revisions.
Two voices built their truth from rhyme,
Both chasing ghosts, both out of time.
Shade forged his truth from pale mothlight,
revised his life in the quiet of night.
Wrote meaning to his untold ache,
and laid ghosts to rest in soft iambic.
He chased butterflies on bent paths,
taper fluttering in grief's draught.
Kinbote sought his kingdom there,
in footnotes manic he scrawled a realm on air.
Conjured king, killer, glass crown,
and anoited himself upon an exile's throne.
Now Zembla gleams, absurd and dire,
her heraldic towers lit by stolen fire.
Across the parchment battleground they roam;
A dead man’s soul, a madman’s fevered tone.
The poet built a pale reliquary;
The madman took it for commentary.
The poem moves through both, defies their visions,
and finds its own truth between revisions.
Two voices built their truth from rhyme,
Both chasing ghosts, both out of time.