VANISHING INNOCENCE

VANISHING INNOCENCE

Found Poem, taken from Lord of the Flies by William Golding,

[CH 4: pg. 61, CH2: pg. 39, CH12: pg. 224-225]

Music performed by Ying Ni, taken from: 

Chopin Ballade in C-minor

Haydn Sonata in C-major

Bach Partita No.2

Together,

They staggered up the last steep of the mountain.

Together,

They chanted.

Together,

They crashed the log on to the great pile.

Together,

They laughed with triumphant pleasure.

One by one, 

The boys stopped going back for more,

And stood.

Breath came even by now,

And sweat dried.  

Strange things happened.

The sea rose up,

Moved apart in planes of blatant impossibility;

The coral reef and the stunted palms float up into the sky,

Quiver,

Be plucked apart,

Run like rain-drops on a wire,

Or be repeated as in an odd succession of mirrors.

Illusions merged into the sky;

There,

The sun gazed down like an angry eye.

Tears began to flow,

For the first time,

He gave up;

Great,

Shuddering spasms of grief

That seemed to wrench his whole body.

His voice rose under the black smoke

Before the burning wreckage of the island;

Infected by that emotion,

The boys wept,

For the end of innocence,

The darkness of man’s heart,

And the fall through the air

Of the true, wise friend.

The sun sank,

Darkness dropped,

And soon

The shelters were full of restlessness,

Under the remote stars.