They met again after so many years,
the red, the black and the blue buccaneer,
in faded coats, their ships in the roads,
their rusty muskets had long not been ready to fire.
They sat 'round the table, sipping some rum,
the black one said: "Don't know why we had to come.
I've not been at sea for a long time, I'm worn-out and tired."
"The same goes for me", the red one replied.
"It's just another indifferent night,
no sails are set, the winds are bad
and our myth has long gone from the taverns and so has our crew."
The blue one agreed: "I know how you feel,
this strange sensation of being unreal,
of not quite existing, of waiting and listening
to a voice that might call me to raids and adventures anew."
But there's no way back through the oceans of time,
and there's no trace of those who were swallowed
by the maw of the serpent with one hundred names
one of them: reason, the other:
the course man must follow.
The black one mused: "My dreams are weird, you see.
There's always a woman staring at me
from a desk at a window in a far inland home,
still somehow I know her and know she's remembering the ocean."
The red one nodded: "I see strange things at night,
a grand theatre, brimming with people and light,
in the orchestra pit the bassist is playing
in perfect routine, without flaw, but devoid of emotion."
"I've had dreams as well", the blue one confessed,
"of a man sitting at just another of those desks,
counting money that's never his own
in a landlocked and too-crowded town where the river is shallow.
I, too, feel a bond to this oceanless clerk
and sometimes it's like in his eyes flares a spark
of a flag – of a ship – something more than this trip
from beginning to end on that ancient course all men must follow."
Well, there's no way back through the oceans of time,
but sometimes the serpent feels sorry
for those washed away on the tide of the years
and leaves them their memories to keep
on their voyage of worry.
Crystal 13.05.2011