The Randomness of Life~Chapter 83 "Sailing to Byzantium"

[mrua7.livejournal.com]

No April story this week. So am posting a fic from my continuing drabble series, 'The Randomness of Life', based on lines from a randomly selected poem...



                                                             


Prompted by: Sailing to Byzantium~ W.B. Yeats

.

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,

Alexander Waverly sat at his conference table during the early morning hours, fighting the yawns that were tormenting him.

Though his people thought he never slept, he did, but it was only short cat naps that saw him through. He didn't like to sleep,

as it allowed the dreams to return.

.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,

No place for him to retreat for comfort, except to the arms of his beloved Estelle.

Still these dreams plagued him. He saw the faces. Some he'd dispatched himself and those he'd ordered it done.

There was no doubt it had been right, yet still the dead plagued him.

.

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.

When it came his time, Alexander knew he would face his Maker for his deeds, though well-intentioned they were.

Taking life was a sin, yet it was a sin he was willing to bear for the sake of the world.

Did that make it Christ-like? No, that would be blasphemous.

.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling

For the sake of the world and the good of mankind...yes, mankind so fragile and precious-

like a golden thing of old, hammered out by the great Artisan.

Was its wrong to want to help protect them from evil?

In the end, God would let Alexander Waverly know...