Bird In God's Garden

I am a bird in God’s garden
And I do not belong to this dusty world
For a day or two they have locked me here
In this cage of my own body
- Richard Thompson



Across the Shadowy Seas we came, heeding the call of Oromë, newly clothed in the flesh of Manwë: Alatar and Pallando, inseparable, indistinguishable, brothers in so much more than birth. Alatar and Pallando, Pallando and Alatar, we felt Manwë’s wind fresh upon new faces, heeded Ulmo’s song with new ears, and saw with new eyes how together they pushed the boat along to Arda, and an unnamable hunger began to grow within us.

Eastward, ever eastward, we went rejoicing in all the perfect imperfections of Illúvatar’s creation, joyfully hunting all that flesh would show: the ways of Illúvatar’s children and of Aulë’s, of the beasts and Yavanna’s growing things; our hunger to know and be known racing us ever onward. Time meant nothing; we thought nothing of waiting silently, unmoving, for seasons to change and patterns to disclose themselves. Alatar and Pallando; Pallando and Alatar: indomitable, unquenchable. Only if you left me did I count the moments until you would return, any discovery colorless and vaporous until I could see my thoughts reflected in your understanding.

Eastward, ever eastward … until, accepting the guidance of Curunir, our searches brought us at last among the Easterlings.

And I know what you thought, for your words unspoken echoed in my head: who more than these would benefit from our learning? They so lawless, we so keen; from them, we thought, what could we not learn? To them, we thought, what might we not teach? So we strayed, after so many years of wandering – Alatar and Pallando; Pallando and Alatar: benevolent, munificent. They received us as gods and, for a time, we turned the love of Sauron from their hearts and sought to do them good.

Time passed, though the years settled only lightly upon us and easily, thoughtlessly, we brushed them from our shoulders. But in the realm of Arda all things have their ends, and a shadow of distrust crept among the Easterlings. Thus we were ensnared, and thus we were imprisoned.

They fed us, so we lived: Alatar and Pallando; Pallando and Alatar: eternal, unending. At times, they would light fires beneath our cell of sweet woods and aromatic attars and together we would fall, freed for a time from our bodies, babbling into a stupor of green fields and white shores leaving, when it passed, only an unquenchable yearning, each time more unbearable than the last, for what we could not remember nor ever quite forget.

How long did we stay thus? Inescapable … I can hardly ask the question without your voice to answer. I cannot even know what I have become without the reflection of your face, the sound of your voice, the transparency of your skin to show me myself: nameless, oblivious, but for the hunger, always the hunger …

Yet I know we will always remain a part of each other: indivisible, I in spirit and you in flesh, but that is cold comfort now that I have only your hollow bones to gnaw upon.