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Poetry

After the Battle: The Five Stages of Severus by Savageland [Reviews - 26]


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After the Battle: The Five Stages of Severus


Five Poems


I. Denial

With his last black hiss of breath the
Dark Lord took them. They were children.
Mine, though I could not acknowledge them.
He Who Must Not Be Forgiven was
blasted into death by the harsh magic
of the Boy Who Lived.
But raving, the Dark One snatched
a ghastly handful of the young and brave.
And when the pit swallowed them,
I was too slow to stop their fall.
I was too slow.

They were children.

I was too weak.

I cannot
Feel.
I cannot comfort her. She grieves.
I cannot take her hand.

This cannot be.
I’d rather demons crushed my soul to sand.

II. Rage

Dark One—
May chaos take you.
May horror gather you
May your cries pull galaxies apart.
May you breathe the ashes
of burnt-out stars.
By unrequited thirst may you be savaged.
By all ten thousand spells for pain
may you be ravaged.

May the dead rise
May the dead attend you
May the young you killed
tear you apart.
May they hurl your remains
into hell’s cold heart.
An unrequited fury leaves me shattered,
By all ten thousand names for pain
is my heart battered.

III. Bargaining

If I could find the hidden heart of earth
And burn my rage to dust within its fire,
If I could feed the full moon’s hungry maw
With subtle poisons born of base desire;
Or take the rose devoured by the worm
And drop its ruined petals on my pyre—
That would not serve. It will not bring them back.
No potion is there strong enough, no spell,
No dungeon-magic deep enough, no curse
To un-make grief, to still the tolling bell.
I haunt the Great Hall where young voices ring,
And I pretend, each day, that all is well.

Pluck out my mind. Obliviate to hell
My writhing memories of those who fell.

IV. Grief

Her hair, a brown wing
Broken; her tears rending me—
No. I cannot. No—

V. Acceptance

I could never have imagined
how her sleeping hands would curve;
Or how her dreaming mouth would shape
my name.
I am powerless and awed
to name the strength with which
she fought.
Relentlessly she pulled me
through the bleak wasteland
of my rage.
She birthed me without mercy
from the underworld:
the long-forgotten music of her grief
enchanting me to life.

When--riding a storm’s passion worthy of goddesses--
she drew me into her
and I opened myself for her,
My Curse unfurled and winged into the Dark.

I rest beside her, breathing Light. . .
. . .my fingers finding dawn upon her face.




After the Battle: The Five Stages of Severus by Savageland [Reviews - 26]


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