~Crucible~
By Cluegirl
Take first, a pound of cold, unloving lead;
Pain-scarred, and trusting not the warmth of care,
Graven with names of the Repented Dead,
So rife with pain, of pain now unaware.
Add this, upon a chill, wind-addled night,
To Hallow's leaves hag-riding 'cross the sky,
A rag of cloud to blind the full moon's sight,
And the transcendent logic of your sigh;
'Neath architecture of your perfect throat,
White marble, dewed as with the sea's regard,
The blazing flame that trails your finger-stroke,
Can shatter that base metal into shards.
Then captured, every fragment, in your breath
So like a ghost against the evening shade,
The cant of your wild voice bespells my death,
As in your fire, I find myself unmade
And you, Green Lion; precious, fabled prize
By mage and man through lingering ages sought,
Wild alchemy at work within your eyes,
Your lips brim-full of life-elixir's draught
The fountain of your youth, a leaping flame
The touch of which consumes this common dross,
One taste, one kiss, and nevermore the same
O, death and madness both are worth the cost.
And now held fast within your athanor
My sulphur, salt, and mercury alloyed,
Denatured, these base properties, and more,
By Grace refined, all detritus destroyed.
One final gasp, a whispered scream, I die,
Unmaged, unmanned, shattered, and formed anew;
Transfix'd upon your fearful symmetry
Transmuted in the crucible of You.
*****
This was written as a gift for LiveJournal's HP_Femme, whose name I drew from the hat on the Merry_Smutmas exchange community. I have a long standing objective fascination with the concept of Alchemy -- the desperate attempts to render the miraculous into a physical equation, to bring eternity somehow into the grasp of a hand. This poem refers to just such a drive within a coldly logical man who suddenly finds himself in the grip of a deeply, potently romantic streak he never dreamed he could posses. This is the companion poem to the picture of the same name, which you can find in the fanart section of my art page.