Per Angusta Ad Augusta

The moment when the boat begins to move away slows down so that all of eternity seems suspended in that very instance. Time seems not to move, but then it does, and he finds the seconds blur into minutes which blur into days and years and centuries until the concept of time itself holds no meanings except a reminder that the present, once realised, is over entirely, and everyone journeys forth into untimely deaths, for every death is untimely, a crushing reckoning of nature. So much potential squandered, so much hope eviscerated beneath its crushing gears.

Except for him. He watches the world wither, no longer a part, but unable to sever himself from its crushing fold. The ripples from the bow of the boat grow more distant. He has forgotten himself at the side of that single lake- strange how easily a man can live without truly living. One can shuffle about the day, drink, eat, sleep, and yet for all intensive purposes be utterly devoid of any vivacity. Trees bend overheard.

After those moments, when that boat left that shore, and had taken himself with it, he was lost. The path back to Camelot mountainous, and he without a horse, and the fact that to see it again would surely kill him in a way that this incessant living could not. It was a reminder of his every failure, and his eternal failure. The boat disappears into the mist. The manner in which he had uttered damnation upon some wrecked destiny sickens him, clawing at the insides of his mind until he finds himself unable to sleep, unable to eat, and yet alive.

He stays for forty days; a lingering in some murky delirium from which he can not escape. Yet time plods on. His stomach unknots and he finds once more that he can eat. The pit which has opened up in him never left, but sleep comes, restless and uneasy, but sleep. He walks, and then returns, and then walks, and returns. He resolves himself on going somewhere, anywhere, Ealdor, Brittany, Gaul, somewhere, but he finds himself choked by some damned lead like a mongrel dog. He forgets, and then realisation comes crashing down on him, and then he returns.

He tries not to think of the past, each memory a dagger within him, but memories flood back each evening until sleep leaves him more exhausted than waking. So he sinks into this state of non-being, occasionally venturing into nearby villages as a travelling physician, more often than not wandering the woods in solitude listening to bird songs and attempting to scrub his mind clean amongst the ivy and willows. The quavering moment of silence when the wind has ceased rushing through the leaves, and the animals, sensing some sacred moment, still, is the only peace he has come to know.

He teaches himself dozens of tongues until the yethow brythonek and ieithoedd brythonaidd of boyhood and Camelot and the time beforecoalesce with Ἑλληνική, Attic, Doric, Ionic, then Aeolic, lingua latina, français, svenska, lëtzebuergesch Русский язык, Македонски јазик, ગુજરાતી, རྫོང་ཁ་ until his mind is muddled with more than memories.

Јас сум уморен.

Gwen comes to him years after the lake and all that had been and would be and once was. He asks how she found him. She tells him that they always knew where he was. And it is strange, he thinks, because he lost himself so long ago.

“I’m marrying Leon,” she says and she looks so much older, lined, and weary.

He makes a noncommittal noise at the back of his throat, and avoids looking her in the eye. He is afraid of her anger, or disappointment, or of her pity. A foreign voice whispers in the crevice of his mind that he hasn’t bathed properly in months- years. He wants her to leave.

“You could return, you know, we mourn for you as we did him. You needn’t hide anymore.”

He bows his head and turns from her, feeling invisible hands twisting at his throat. There are so many things he wishes to say to her, a million thoughts which he wishes to share. Instead he simply says “I wish you all the best.” He never wants her to leave.

She does.

He can no longer recall her face, nor her voice, although sometimes he imagines he can recall that certain raise of her eyebrows when she was excited or the soft trill of her voice when she teased. Most times he just feels empty.

Camelot falls. He feels it within him rather than seeing it with his own eyes. He does nothing except perhaps appreciating more the soft croon of the nightingale and the way the moon passes beneath shuttered clouds knowing that life is fleeting and nothing is eternal. There are no laurels in Albion.

bün allēne.

He goes to his mother when she dies, holding her hand but not finding the strength to loosen his tongue. To tell her about pain and loneliness and guilt. She weeps and tells him how glad she is to see him, she calls him her sweet boy and he can’t bring himself to correct her.

Gwen dies. Leon dies. Wars are fought and empires fall and Percival has been dead for years and the languages they speak are no longer the languages of chivalry or great kings, and men die. The dry branches crack beneath his heels as he wanders the woods.

εἰ γὰρ ἀποθνῃσκοίμι·

He no longer tracks the years, or the days, the documentation of time holds little allure for him. Wars crumble walls. Reformation, Counter-Reformation, Acts of the Union, and sometimes he feels certain that today shall be the day, that with Arthur’s return he himself shall live once more too. Wars, the Great War, the industrialisation of slaughter and hell on Earth rains down and the trees are felled to build parapets and trenches of disease and destruction. Surely today. Rape, genocide, and nothing stirs the edges of the lake except for ungodly breezes in which no salvation may be found. Österreichisch-Ungarische Monarchie and دولت عليه عثمانیه crumble. Союз Советских Социалистических Республик. An overthrow of tyranny. What would Arthur have made of this?

It is a startling realisation that he can no longer recall the face that plagued his dreams through the eons, at once representing hope and horror and happiness and despair. He strains his mind for that lilting of his name as he was called to complete some numerous inane task. It doesn’t come. The face beneath the crown is indistinct. He feels the weight of the dying man in his arms once more. He weeps. Großdeutsches Reich and war.

vereor.

Hope is a foreign form of idealisation. He wanders still through winding paths of oaks and tumbling streams. The forest and he are one in the same, unacting, mindful of nothing beyond the canopy of leaves. He can go now wherever he pleases at a single thought. Paramaribo, طنجة, Gaborone, Yaren, मुंबई, София. Yet the past cannot be recalled, it dances from him ever further. He wanders cities, sheds his face and adopts a new one with ease. Cities and towns and villages older than he that contained and contain the hopes of thousands. Each so distinct with their sights and smells and manner and yet they all fall to dust. All equal in death. He never stays away for long.

He speaks to the trees with a voice that cracks from lack of use. He screams into their stoic silence. They never return his call. The mysteries of the sky have been unraveled by quantum equations and molecular mols. There is no place for him in this world of corporacy and production

and atomisation. He yearns for release. There is no belonging and no meaning. What cruel gods made him thus, doomed to wander the Earth’s crust until Armageddon or humanity annihilated itself- and if those should fail to materialise- what then? Is this his punishment for his failures, for the evils he had committed? But surely, surely, others had done far worse. He had once feared death, now, more than anything, he fears living.

क्यों

He sleeps and sleeps and sleeps, the stars of helium and hydrogen and carbon spin overhead, some scientific, no longer heavenly, awning. He wakes and he walks, the birches do not bid him hello. The birds flee from their roosts. He stops. A tremor.

Ripples.

He sees and does not see, the trees before him remain still.

A man, crowned with golden hair, frees himself from the pull of water.

He remembers. He runs.

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jас сум уморен. (Macedonian) = I am tired.



bün allēne. (Middle Dutch) = I am alone.



εἰ γὰρ ἀποθνῃσκοίμι· (Attic Greek) = If only I may die.



vereor. (Latin) = I am afraid.



क्यों (Hindi) = Why



أمل (Arabic) = Hope