Lower Yeonggwang Valley

Dr Hubert On The Beach at Jeres

by Polychrome Hightower (a pen-name for Mahhalian radical, Hhakullybiry)

He was lost, alone. His companions were dead.
Dr Hubert stood under Mahhalian skies.
The man's disconsolate face had turned to gray,
And the war, begun and just ended, like gold,
Seemed pointless. The billowing clouds threatened rain.
There was a ragged pine down the shore. A lie

Had started it all. It was pointless. A lie
had bloomed, flourished, been nurtured, and now was dead.
Days before, with hope and optimism, the rain
had relented and the typically wan skies
had given way to bright explosions of gold
And crimson as the sun rose. Just now, a gray

Seagull spun, landed, stepped twice, and pecked at gray
bits of sand, searching for insects, that might lie
Beneath. Dr Hubert bent and picked up a spent gold
shell-casing from the sand. Memento of dead
Fellow fighters. He turned and peered at the skies
But his memory only showed him the rain

Of bullets that hours before, before the rain
Diligently washed the sour smell of gray
Gunpowder from the cold air, had filled the skies'
Dome with pain, useless suffering and death. That lie
Had been the false utopia promised by dead
Men. Earthly paradise had been a fool's gold.

Some of the birches on the hillside had gold
leaves, which hung like saddened children as the rain
started again finally, pelting the dead
vegetation. Their white bark, damp, looked like gray
Photographs. He felt tired, now. I want to lie
down," he muttered. "The Collective filled our skies

With hope for glory. Here in Jeres those skies
Instead have been destroyed." A pale egret, gold
beak flashing, lands down the beach. "Nature can't lie
To us, though. I will take solace in the rain."
Born among angels, having fared across gray
seas, the idealist peered from among the dead.

Under Mahhalian skies, driftwood damp and dead,
On gold sands lay. Dr Hubert faced the gray
Heavens and chose to lie down in the lucid rain.