I Am That Shadow

The shadow prowling amongst the graves of butterflies laughed boisterously.

(Lord Jim, Joseph Conrad, 1900).

My downtime in Ieper is filled with books, Lord Jim, Frankenstein and Dracula. All three novels appeal to a quest for a single line, perhaps more, to inspire pen and ink in scripted movement from left to right. Phrases become my impetus for more. All three novels speak to moral failings, hauntings and isolation – none are about the Great War – their over arching themes reflective of Great War’s truths.

Their author’s words are just my start. One phrase (sometimes the unlikeliest of choices) can surmount all others and leads to the next conception and more. From Conrad’s shadows and butterflies I return in reminiscence of Rifle House Cemetery where the annunciated turn of an iron gate launched a thousand and more butterflies towards the welkin. The smeterling’s colour, against the sombre green hanging and attachment of flora, mixed as impressionists within the graves of frail memory.

True Conrad’s pen describes Stein’s collections of Lepidoptera but this phrasing, like music, hints at recollections of threads to be gathered. Rifle House delivered my All Quiet moment. I am that shadow walking amongst the fallen whilst powdered wings take flight then rest. How I should like to see them again – as equal to my first Flanders poppy.

I do not, as the shadow, laugh within these walls. Der schmeterling of Milestone and Freund within these current days of unquiet blood and the biting of granite – can we not find again your metamorphosis. Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly (Chuang Tzu).

Oh my wing clapping eurkalyte, harbinger to my immediate vlidners gevolg. With each basking of your wings a reflection upon life’s fragilities and élan vital; as erratic as my own searching footsteps. My shadow and you – we well meet again.