Poem by jan-u-wine, inspired by "Frodo and the Enamoured Woman"....

[mechtild]

Since posting my new "Frodo Art Travesty" manip...

Frodo and the Enamoured Woman (detail below), one of the Tolkien friends with whom I correspond, jan-u-wine, was inspired to write a poem to go with it. She is a writer of very perceptive, very fine LotR poetry (a link to her works appears below her poem).







What she wrote for this manip was so evocative to me of what might have transpired in the mind of Frodo when faced with the spectacle of such love for him in the face of another, I decided to edit it into my entry.

Here it is....

The Fields of Forever by jan-u-wine


The warm-cool curve of her throat rests upon my shoulder,

tender pulse
racing and fluttering like the wings
of some wild and frighted bird,

though
her eyes are calm
and sure

and sorrowfully certain

(as if she held some great truth
untold,

untellable,
within).

And I feel
caught

unawares,

as though there were more
to my nakedness

than a simple lack of clothes,
more that rises within

than that without.

Almost
I welcome
the familar sharp definition
of the cliff-face at my back,

the chill counterpoint of rock
holding me on the edge of a dreme.

I wanted.......

I wanted
to smile

as her nose brushed mine

I wanted.......

I wanted to
laugh

at the sweet absurdity of the gesture,
at the curious

intimacy of it.

I wanted.....

oh,
I wanted to know
(above all, I desire to know)


why
her eyes were sad with a wanting of their own

how
in all the wide Circle of the World

she chanced upon me
(or we, upon each other),

who she should be
and

where she might call home......

I wanted.....

I want
to know

what
the summer-crushed-berry
of her mouth tastes like

and the feel of her hands,
running

like water

like silksmooth moonlit water
upon me

and mine -

answering,

answering
until

there can be no more questions,

only
the gentling of my name upon her lips

as if it were the only word the moon and stars
and sun

had need of or would ever know.

She is settling the rich darkness of her garment about her again,
though

her unbound hair still mingles with mine,
the scent and feel and aching-sweet sense of
her

echoing and singing within me.

And we fall into sleep, thus:

arms and legs twined to and twixt,
a warm puzzle of limbs
(gently tired by loving),

eyes speaking all which there are no words for
until

perforce
sleep closes them.

And that last moment of waking
falls

into the first moment of dreme,

her eyes holding me more-so
than ever hands could do,

until
I am walking within the startling fields of them

and dreme upon
forever.

~ Frodo and the Enamoured Woman:









~ Jan-u-wine's Lord of the Rings-based poetry is featured at LotR Scrapbook.



~ Mechtild



View Frodo Art Travesties Table of LJ Entries page HERE.

View Frodo Art Travesties Album HERE.

Comments

[pearlette.livejournal.com]

This is a beautiful, beautiful poem ... exquisitely written and so deeply felt. This is real love she's describing. Applied to Frodo, who so needed healing in his soul, it's absolutely wonderful ... But you can also apply this lovely poem to RL love, which gives it an extra resonance. This is real ... that's what I love about it. And applied to Frodo ... *swoons dead away*

That gorgeous manip of yours works wonders!

[mechtild.livejournal.com]

Pearl! Isn't it beyond lovely? The poem, I mean. Although it's beauty is sort of related to the image -- as with her poem's two lovers, the image and words sort of make love together, like, "arms and legs twined to and twixt, a warm puzzle of limbs."

I am not really that much for poetry, Pearl. Normally, I much prefer writers to say what they want to say using prose. But this poem is one of the exceptions. I feel as though she has expressed Frodo's mind and heart with an intimacy that prose seems unsuited to, but which poetry suits perfectly.

If prose had to express these things for Frodo, it might make him seem too self-conscious, too "stagey," to say such deep and beautiful things, a hobbit of the Shire (even if he is Iorhael). But the beauty of verse is like that of opera: what would be too intense -- too much if spoken, seems perfectly natural, even inevitably "right" when sung. An ordinary seamstress like Mimi or a down-on-his-luck poet like Rudolpho in La Boheme can sing what they could never say. When they sing their Act I duet, it is as if their hearts and souls are soaring up to the heavens (and into hearers' hearts). It would never work that way if they spoke those same lines.

I feel as though jan-u-wine's poem is like that. If Frodo had inner dialogue to go with this manip in a prose scene, he might marvel to himself over his good fortune to have won her love, thinking what a topping lass she was and how dashed lucky he was to get her. But, expressed in poetry his thoughts can express what is in his heart and mind and soul with a height of expression and a depth and weight of feeling that prose simply cannot convey.

When I looked at this image and read jan-u-wine's poem, I thought, "Why have I been bothering to write a story about Frodo in love? She has shown more of Frodo in love in this slender column of verse than I have conveyed in twelve fat chapters."

*sob*

I really, really love this poem. I am so glad I made the manip, if only to have inspired it.

[mechtild.livejournal.com]

If Frodo had inner dialogue to go with this manip in a prose scene, he might marvel to himself over his good fortune to have won her love, thinking what a topping lass she was and how dashed lucky he was to get her.

Can't edit my comment, so I want to underscore that I was overdoing it to make a point. Of course Frodo could do better inner dialogue than that! :D

P.S. Yes, the poem does indeed beautifully convey love, as such.