Work Text:
80°: Chrysanthe𝑚𝑢𝑚
.I.
To grasp one's nature in the glove-numbed hand
and change it is no fair or simple task.
The woe and grief thus caused: I understand,
and yet I wilt to do that which you ask.
From when I was not yet a trembled sprout,
I felt it keen: the pain in others' hearts.
But did I help, or reach, or even shout?
I fled in terror, severed threads in parts.
And when I budded in the Underground,
Imagination's ripe utility
would let me hush the Noise to not a sound:
my natural, latent, own ability.
Thus fearful rage and tearful grief become
a whispered wilting, kept (chrysanthe)mum.
.II.
My fellow flower bloomed in gardens green,
the butterfly confided sweet in you.
Of all the nectar drunk in woods unseen,
what did you glean? What were you privy to?
I was his partner; you , his heartfelt friend,
who longed—like him—for flowers pressed in glass,
that time would not clock out their beauty's end:
a fate that now for you has come to pass.
Perhaps if I had tried to damp his flame,
or rest my hand upon his fevered brow,
the gardens green would have remained the same,
and you would bloom beside me even now.
Alas time beats a never-ceasing drum,
and wilted gardens keep (chrysanthe)mum.
.III.
I wonder, when you heard the plan, your eyes—
did they grow wide, a deer in headlights bright?
When the games you played at last revealed their prize,
the board now cast in grey, not black and white?
What pain befell you, when his leadership
brought you to hide your friend in sewers deep?
What anguish, in your odd, diagonal flip?
And what relief, the chance for soundless sleep?
I must confess I know you less than she.
You took the risk; it broke your disc apart.
The friends who held you near and deer agree
that how you lost the Game reveals your hart.
Alas, to thunder did your hart succumb,
and buried bones too keep (chrysanthe)mum.
.IV.
Address the dead, and you hear no replies,
but those alive may match your word with theirs.
With ease, I pen my guilt-soaked last goodbyes,
but now the living bid me tend affairs.
They ask me to Conduct this garden green
and help reset the board of black and white.
They task me not to flee but to convene
and stay no matter what the grief or fright.
Yet how do I address the crane whose sun
was shadowed for my failures to remain?
And how do I address the steadfast one,
who chose to stay and fight, and not by chain?
The dead have nought in task or ask or hum.
But living do: "keep not (chrysanthe)mum."