Merry on the Pelannor Fields

      A cold wind is rising,
      Ripping at the banners with its hissing teeth,
      Lifting from my forehead sharp curls
      Matted and heavy with blood not my own.
      Chilled within and without,
      The sudden emptiness and pain have left me
      Trembling.

      Dead eyes watch me dully:
      Eyes of death are all too near,
      Looking up at me midst crushed grass and clod.
      Hideous beast eyes, sunken-in and crusted
      Slowly drying in the coiling reek,
      Their Master’s own terrible gaze yet burns
      In my memory;
      A torment to my mind.
      How can darkness have such fire?

      The eyes of its intended prey reflect the darkened ragged sky,
      Stilled in death, long-lashed brown eyes
      White-rimmed as the death-fear left them,
      Blood-flecked from the anguished desperation,
      White muzzle yet spattered with reddened foam.
      You tried to save your Master, you tried.
      But your eyes will never again quicken to your master’s call,
      Brighten at the sound of the Horn of the people,
      Nor light with the joy of the running.

      And the one who befriended my aching heart,
      My dear beloved Lord, as a father you were to me…
      Gone grey as ash, pale as the smoke that rises above us.
      As the colorless wash of a winter’s twilight sky.
      Your dead eyes are blind to both banner and kin.
      Empty windows of a plundered house.
      My arm hangs heavily as I kneel,
      So cold, so cold.
      In the wind my tears bite like trails of ice,
      Is the warmth of life so fleeting?

      Eowyn, courageous lady – oh, how could I not see?
      You came seeking out the warrior’s death,
      Covering your despair in war’s poison glory.
      As a lily bruised and cut, trampled in the field
      You reached for the ending of your bitter song,
      Only to see it take your own Liege
      Striking him down before your horrified eyes.
      And mine.
      Your soul spilled out as golden as your hair.
      In the mist you lay, so still, so still.
      The grass under my knees is slick
      With blood not my own.

      Tears quench the embers of my own battle-fire
      In this blackened, acrid, smoke-laden mist.
      My heart beats as a cold weight within me,
      And I hear my own breath coming in gasps.
      I am lost, so lost, so lost and alone.
      My liege and my King -
      I pressed your hand to my lips;
      Your words of parting were spoken,
      Words of the Great to this small hobbit of the Shire.
      Your dead hand lays heavy in my own.
      What warmth I have cannot reach where you have gone.
      I must reach out to close your once-kind,
      Darkened eyes.
      The end of your bright morning came so soon.

      “Forgive me, Lord, that I broke your command
      And have done no more in your service
      Than to weep at our parting.”

      “Grieve not! It is forgiven.
      Great heart will
      Not
      Be denied.”

A. Buckles / '03