To celebrate the launch of the FIRST EDITION of a self-published pamphlet containing all 11 poems in the Complete Collection of BALADIN’S DREAM and OTHER TALES by edenbray, along with full Authors Notes I am offering a signed, printed hard-copy for just £5 inc. post/packing for orders within the United Kingdom and £6.50 inc. shipping for orders outside the UK ~ This is a limited time offer!

#NOTE ~ please email ME ;~ stepheneede689@btinternet.com or post a comment in the comments box at the foot of this page and request details of how to make payment ~ including your name and the address where you would like the printed copy to be sent ~ PLEASE indicate if it is to be a gift. Many thanks ~ edenbraytoday

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TO Celebrate this occasion I am re-posting all eleven parts – starting today with BALADINS DREAM  ~ Part I

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BALADIN’S DREAM

and OTHER TALES

by edenbray

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BALADIN’S  DREAM ~ I 

Authors Foreward to the Collection ~ an unending Collection of Prose prepared under the theme ~ ‘Baladin’s Dream’

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Baladin ~ a sage, a prophet, a mystic, a mythical and spiritual visitor to various places on our planet and possibly others also, who, in his latter years recounts from his vast memoirs of life & experience with tales of valour, tragedy and joy ~ either real or imagined ~ in a rambling tome revealing wisdom and vivid, biographical insight.

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A Dream ~ The Many Parts of this DREAM take on various poses, are noted at different times in history, deal with different facets of our human experience ~ faith, myth and fantasy and occur within various cultural settings. They might suggest Baladin has kind of  always been with us as an observer of life and death who tells tales with his own brand of storytelling and from his own, unique perspective.

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Baladin is my ageless companion, my friend and confidant, my alter-ego. He is a priest, a sensuous lover, a good husband, a pioneer, a hunter, an explorer, a visionary. He is a poet, a prophet, a soothsayer, a dreamer of dreams. Baladin is dangerously wise. He is someone you might trust and retire to on a dark night when you were anxious, troubled or afraid … He is a Leonardo cartoon, an unfinished Hemingway, a lesser-known album by Radiohead, a discarded line of Heaney verse, a Picasso drawing that one Carlos Garcia found in a box in a Madrid attic, he is that Turner watercolour sketch I ‘stole’ in one mad, imagined moment from the Clore Gallery Archive at the Tate. He is a fine bottle of Barolo or Montepulciano, an aged bottle of single-malt … …

Baladin has seen it all and more besides. More than most anyway and yet he still emerges into the sunlight, out of the blizzard or into the rain. He steps up and steps forward for yet more of this tortured, human experience.                                   

                                                                                          ~ edenbraytoday

                                                                                                    ~ 17.06.2020

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BALADIN’S DREAM ~ I

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A stream of prosaic adventures

like clouded marble glass

lit within by holy fire

illumined and permeated by

citrus light that grows outward

Journeys made in smooth streams

timeless travel on limitless purpose

the gold-crowned clouds of bird-blue skies

a wild and spattered foundation

for the unimaginable imagined

Clean, rushing water

bronze, round pebbles

and rainbow clusters hidden

Baladin’s dream abounds

unrestrained, the danger point passed

his mind rushing on into the

green garden of summer delights

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Freedom personified

and only music in his ears

sometimes light as shepherd flutes

and gypsy fiddles

others grandiose and building

but always triumphant and bronze-gold

Baladin has seen many muddied summers

soured moments caught as struggling 

flies held by indescribable murk.

He has felt cold winds that dry and burn

and has lain parched, unwanted,

in deserts fading fire.

He has for a time known the dull blank blindness

of a night which has no end

and seen bloody pain

Held the hand of tortured flesh

sat beside the spirits of the abused

and also known the rush of blood

the fire of unholy passion, ugly greed.

He, for a time was a victim of grey forces

whose stench and tireless intrigue

had led him naked and fettered

sightless and without cause

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Baladin was now an old man

his hair long and greyed, hanging loosely

his wisdom now only made him

forget the ugly tales he might tell

of recollections and reflections the old are

prone to and feel deserved of

Baladin sat with his mother-wife who had

known so much of him and yet so little

Love as blind as new-born leverets

had knit them as a well-worn rug

and they two could ponder

on the wonder of a blushed red sun 

as it lay in the twilight

grey-blue streamers coiled around

and running through it

the form of two naked lovers held forever

Baladin’s mind and spirit left now to wonder

looked out and beyond into the bright morning

he travelled the skua-skies

journeys wondrous birds make twice a year

and dreamed a dream so beautiful …

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written 27.07.1991

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Da Edenbray

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