The
lake became anywhere, its eges the gateway,
its depths and reaches the shimmerings of guessed
time, and none in the house knew, and
none there saw or understood that they had lost her, Esme(e),
once their Esme(e), but
she had gone away from them into dusty mellow
deserts, to high peaks blazing in crystal dawns, entered
dim and ancient forests whose roots entangled their spreading canopies
and where trails were in the sky and worlds
were in the sky and tunnels passed through
seas shaken with tempest
and giant creatures, where were armies,
promises of fleet steeds upon the plains, secrets
in the eyes of ruddy gazelles, all of this,
more, more, and
Esme(e) had gone away from them by the lake.
She
may have always been so and never theirs
for the lake was speculum as well as mirror
but it was not the magical
spring of rejuvenation.
Yet
perhaps it was.