All wanted things grew silent the night,
the absence of understanding became your entombment.
The languid beauty of your sleeping figure
set secretly from my reach, sparkled with a dark beauty.
Death brought you the release of your inexhaustible torment
living the life, five years her absence brought you.
In the darkened state of my dreams, with the bright
knowledge of a murderous truth, I alone now know, I am your friend.
I sent out across the expanse for any who would come
to honor you as a man, as the giver of gifts, as the sacrificial lover.
No one came.
Your body lie as in sleep, waiting for her to come
As you always had, with the sharp ambition to win her.
The embroidery upon the satin should bear an epitaph,
The great lover who built an empire from longing.
Campaign dreams, the texture of your desires, sprinkled the color of your coffin
casting long shadows over the foundation of the great house you hoped to lead her home to.
Green light blinking on in the expanse, far greater, with no boat to sail across such a sea with.
She gave you the emptiness of regret instead, lay silence upon your quiet breast in lieu of flowers.
Sleep now, Gatsby, your father’s hand is near.
I’ll keep watch now, settle deep into the bosom of peace.
“So we beat on, boats against the current,
borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
~F. Scott Fitzgerald, the final line from the Great Gatsby.
My poetic tribute to one of the greatest literary characters in American fiction and his author. The Great Gatsby is one of my favorite novels of all time and I've often wanted to write an elegy for a fictional character, this is my first attempt. An Elegy for Jay Gatsby.
Posting tonight with the fabulous poets over at dVerse for Open Link Night #95.
