Still, I Taste the Dawn

By John Evans

Still, I Taste the Dawn journeys towards a union through suffering, towards a glimpse of heaven, the presence of Divine Love, while experiencing the homeward odyssey, our grail-quest that comprises this pilgrimage we call life. The faces of the characters in these poems may be quite different, and not all of them may know precisely whom they are to look for in a theological sense. Some are seeking respite from the battlefield, others, the memory of a romantic interest, others still more, the tranquility of a society inspired and led by fraternal love. But in all of these glimpses is a universal hunger for “The Dawn” or a Eucharistic encounter with total love, transcendent love, and dare we say, incarnate love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Dec 9, 2021
• ISBN: 9781716025013

John Evans

Having a father who ran a shop selling model railways probably sealed the fate of John Evans as a railway enthusiast. Spending all his money - and rather too much of his time - amassing a collection of railway pictures, he fortunately stored them carefully away. 'My education was undertaken at Northampton engine shed,' he jokes. He now lives in West Yorkshire and still ventures regularly to the lineside.

Book preview

Knocknarea

Of old I heard the church bells call,

Me to the silent well,

Where you would wash your soiled wears,

In pitchers painted green.

You sang about the grassy climbs,

And crags of that cool glen,

As if you alone possessed the earth,

And knew her quiet trends.

Each note fell on me like home,

When home stands far away,

So that I loved to love your smile,

Before the crack of noon.

To and fro your footfalls sprung,

A kind of calm in me,

Mirrored in the sleeping hills,

And lowlands wreathed in smoke.

But now your shade has wandered by,

And mingled with the dirt,

To kiss the lonesome willow-meads,

And garlands on your tomb.

A shadow dogs my every step,

And drowns my desert mind,

In glimpses of your gleaming stare,

Which fall on me no more?

Yet in dreams which are as scenes,

Of summer in decline,

I meet you nigh the silent well,

And heed the church bells’ call.

The ponderings of a traveler glimpsing the mountain pass where once a great kingdom stood

Knee high in the muddy river,

Knee high into the mire of creation, the silt and flow of worlds in flux,

I set my face toward the everlasting hills,

And drink deep the echo of the primordial wind.

What is your song, you ancient heights?

What is your melody, your depthless wells of sleet and snow?

What mysteries have you kept back from unworthy reckless eyes?

What treasures of forgotten days rest in your entangled roots of oblivion,

Down in the roots of the mountains where the kings of old slumber on,

On beds of gold cold as the moon’s chilly fields of silver dust,

Until the horn of summons calls them home again,

Home to stand upon the wintering fields where once they reigned as princes among the children of Adam?

Even so I wonder and marvel at the forbidden doors,

The secret gate into the midst of the rock hewn mansions of yore,

Where the lamps of the handmaidens and their chieftains hung,

As Autumnal flowers placed in festive wreaths upon the gabled balustrades of the great hall,

Where the thrones of the grey-haired thanes and the young earls gathered round the chalice of their queen dressed in woven flax of blue,

Her raven smile belying the memory of battles won and campaigns lost,

Her voice mingled with the lyre as the procession of the Lord lings pass,

With the passing of the amber cup and the reciting of tales, some true some half true, some rich in honest lies,

Of voyages into the westernmost sea, into the deathless country,

Of the bones of giants and the chronicles of the learned and of the damned.

From my hollow knee high in the muddy river,

Knee high into the mire of creation, the silt and flow of worlds in flux,

I look on the crest and the slopes where their abandoned towers bear them witness,

And sigh to go, their lilting songs reverberating in the silence of my frostbitten ears,

Washing my hands in the sacred waters before turning to the familiar paths of the woodland,

My quiver filled with the longings of a bygone age.

From the Shadow of the Tavern Door

I think of her within the shadow of the tavern door,

Within the threshold of vacant stools ripe with memories of the good night,

Where she and I raised the storied-roof with song,

And mingled our laughter with the mist which roles off the Hudson’s quiet shore.

And even now, glimpses of dawn’s yellow embers burn,

Like the stitched dandelions on her Summer-dress,

Or the mischief in those honest eyes gleaming,

Pressing my soul ever Westward toward,

That point of dancing, when we swayed as one upon the pier,

The melodies of star and moon woven into the fire of her dark and disrupted hair,

Her voice light with a gentle sort of knowing.

And I cannot help but recall the day,

She sealed my dreams in an unexpected kiss,

At my Father’s doorstep, at the morning of an age,

When all the world flashed before her sandaled feet,

In stirrings of a soul’s pining for union,

For the meeting of undivided minds,

In acts of tender giving, no heart can steal.

And so I linger where the dawn flows unsplintered,

From the well-worn beams of this pub where our roads converged,

Pondering the lanes which guided us home to the familiar table overlooking the harbor,

Marveling at the ripples of the hours already present in the photo she left in my care,

The icon of her face capsized in the richer portrait of my inner-most imagining,

In the memory of her head pillowed on my chest, fanned in comfort’s soothing reign,

The little droplets of tap water from my breakfast cup coalesced upon the picture frame,

As if to paint a tiny halo about the confines of my passing through this place.

The Emissary

Through thorn and briar and the windswept gloom, I bore,

The standard you bade me keep, at the dawning of the world,

Until I fell at the brooding foot of the White Mountains,

At the roots of your kingdom where the towers of Constantine bloom.

You were with our legionaries, in the plains behind us,

Leading gagged and bound our adversary, after his slaughter in the place of hollow springs,

And so you sought a messenger to prepare your homecoming,

To awake those who had fallen to false dreams amidst their posts,

And to charge the daughters of your House to refrain from their old haunts where wine and idols festered.

So I, the least among the nine ranks of your servants returned to Citadel,

And in the trappings of a vagabond I took up my corner before the princes and dominions of your realm.

Gates of iron stood before me,

Gates guarded by the faces of the watchers amidst their misty heights.

Their scarlet robes like blood in the sunset,

Their steel caps figured in the forms of birds and bestial monstrosities.

The bows of the watchers bent above me.

Harsh cries spilt from the battlements,

For they, mistaking me for an intrepid foe,

Roused from their dreary repose to armorial militancy.

But I, the emissary of The High King,

Unfurled the standard, My Lord had caused me to bear,

And with one cry proclaimed his glad tidings, being The Good News of his victory,

Over The Enemy, in the land of frost and bitter woes.

These were the words of my mouth and the form of my purpose,

Read from the scroll you had carved into the fabric of my mind, through love obedient,

"Hear me you watchers in the high countries.

Open your deaf ears you who sit enthroned in stone.

Your King comes returning in a little while,

His Enemy in chains and the allies of his enemy cast down from their imperious berg.

May the one who has worked in stealth deal in lies no longer,

But prove himself a Man in the office of his stewardship.

May the maid who has shed tears for the fallen put off her sackcloth.

Let her anoint her likeness in oil and go out to meet the returning band.

For though the evening has waxed as cruel as winter,

And though your thoughts have rested on the dagger’s edge,

The Last Fiend shall be hurled headlong through fields of unfailing fire,

And your fidelity rewarded, even as your stumbling have been washed away.

If offences you have committed, then in this service you shall expiate them.

If in loyalty you have stood, then in this last preparation you shall maintain your cause.

For honored shall be the one whom the King finds vigilant,

Vindicated shall be the soul who remembers from whence he has drawn his name."

Ulises’ Promise

Let us walk the wild shore,

Where the jagged clifftops moor,

The memory of ten thousand black sails in the harbor,

So as to brook the song-laden sea,

Where the sirens of the depths weave their lies and dreams,

To dye the sand of Ilium red with the tears of widows, wives, and hungry martyrs.

Yes, I have paid the ferryman,

And have sung my oracles to the blessed and the damned,

My lyre planted even at the dais of sleepless gardens far beneath the currents of the earth,

So as to bear you home,

You whom hell jealously stole,

That April morning, they sent the town crier through the drowsy streets declaring war,

And curses on some proud and thankless nation.

Low, I bear the timber for the sacrifice of the ages on my bludgeoned shoulders bowed,

Pining for your kiss bearing a fool’s iron crown.

An orphan clothed in gossip, thrice set adrift,

Washed up on the coastline of another isle of ghosts,

At the roots of yet another seven-peaked mountain.

A million miles far from here,

Still, I taste the dawn.

This our net of tears,

For though the bars of silence close me in,

My ears they catch the voices of the many mansioned imperium of paradise.

Beside the rings of smoke they speak of,

I have bathed in cherry wine,

I have riddled with the