‘The Flowers’ and Other Poetry by David Bellemare Gosselin

The Flowers

Upon a morning stroll serene
Across many young floral gardens
Greeting me on those fields of green
Was the red rose who all love pardons.

The humming bird about it flutters
The bees its sweet soft hues admire
But I hear a miser who mutters
As storms prepare to unleash their ire.

“Beauty is eternal truly,”
I heard that beautiful rose say
But who can for me find such a beauty
Who won’t one day just fade away?

I fled and turned back home instead
And found there flowers weeping dew;
“Don’t let them see you cry,” I said,
But they replied “We cry for you.”

The Chained Muse

Behind the sparkling light in all men’s eyes
Across the wide arcade of twinkling skies
Lie hidden hopes and dreams of those who died
Who wished but not in vain to have tears cried.
Their story goes like many who have gone,
Yet nameless, still ringeth their clarion:
Like the wind that carries the trumpet’s call,
Or the waves that take us through life’s falls.
So must the smallest flicker our guide become
Our only guide in life through the maelstrom,
Like glimpsing the light of a nameless star
Who leads us to ‘n fro places afar.
Such things as turn men’s sights into a haze
May be those things which change our ways,
Like that shining light of a nameless star
Out in the corner of the skies afar,
Which causes us to wonder at the sky
As our hearts with the unknown come nigh.
Thus wits lie solely in these shapeless skies
Whose forms to the eye remain in disguise
But light when caught in the corner of one’s eye
Across the arcades of the mind’s peaks high
That twinkling spec in the eyes of mortals
Reminds us all of that immortal;
Like that shining light of a nameless star,
Out in the corner of the skies afar.

The hope and dread of days which lie ahead,
Thus makes us wonder in the skies above
About the difference of Gods in our stead;
For then could mortals know eternal love
Never losing sight of ourselves and our stars,
But with the fruits of poesie tame mars,
Catching the echo of immortal rhymes
And rendering our cries of war to chimes.
For then would we have time to change our ways
Resolves mistakes and catch eternal rays
Or should we suffer eternal regret
That an end to our woe is never met?
Such are the thoughts that burn in brains of mortals
As on this muting path our life of quarrels.
For if a man could gain poetic fire
Like a mortal steal Apollo’s lyre,
Could he send from his burdened lonesome post
On earth, that which the seeming prophets host
Who’s echoes reach the peaks of heaven and earth
And seal the graves of pestilence and dearth.
For if a man could taste his fruits desire
To be not burned but drink from the fire
If he could bite into the apple immortal
He would on earth have found heavens portal:
Could man thus cheat his own mortal death
To live and sing after his final breath
Becoming Godlike in his mortal skin
With Godlike sparks to scorch his coil thin?

David Bellemare Gosselin is a student in classics and languages in Montreal.

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