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EOWYN'S DREAM
(on Eowyn's life before the arrival of Aragorn)
"Then you think that the darkness is coming?" "Darkness inescapable?" - Eowyn (J.R.R. Tolkien)
The rain has gone down behind the hills of our land.
Now Theodred is dead, my Lord. Your son is dead.
So why will you not go to him? Will you do nothing?
The green hills of Rohan have been taken and made
into broken shields and swords. I wept on the blades.
I walked in bare feet. For there was little left of me.
All my waking dreams were of my brother, Eomer,
fleeing darkness or fighting darkness, until this hour
and on the very edge of waking light, he was gone.
And the green hills of our names, and all the graceful
horses, that galloped like the wind, were no longer.
It was all the darkness flowing gently into my breath
like the voice of a worm, entering the mind through
a willing ear, that listens for love in its despair, before
the golden sun has risen, or a new season has yet come
and then the creeping sleep paralysis pinning me down,
and the ghost with the black forked tongue on the edge
of my ocean, upon the cold stone of the fortress floors.
My dying cousin, the demonic possession, the echo,
the whisper, the apparition, the place of its haunting,
its motionless breath closing in around me, daylight
slipping away, its dying edges on the window ledge,
growing shadows from within, the chill of certainty. |
