Hear the City Burn?

Gabrielle on the Dark Water ~ By Nero (2003)


It was in that ship that Gabrielle would sometimes
talk to me on the lonely star watch, asking above the
music of the bugling night, the waves roaring with
thousands of lonely voices, perhaps voices of all
who had ever drowned, all who had ever died.

“Is it a Star?” Gabrielle asked. “Is it a spark?
Where do the waves’ motions take up? Is that a
dolphin’s shining back or an island? Will the tide draw
us shoreward, but who draws the shore, and do the
hills and valleys move like waves, swelling and
breaking into the trees of foam, human faces?”

“Tell me, “ Gabrielle said, “where is the shore, and
is there no shore, no shore of light or darkness? What
are those foundations of light breaking upon the waves
and the clouds, stars like fires upon the
waters of the darkness – Arcturus, Andromeda, rainy
Haydes? Is there no shore but the argosy of the moving
stars, or are the stars like watchmen’s lamps put
out, or are they the eyes of a peacock? Is it
winter-rimed Orion or the eye of a bird?”

“What birds do you see,” Gabrielle asked me, “and are
they drifting leeward like the stars?”