Stewards of Gondor: Genverse Arc
That Which Remains Us: 3. Requiem
There was more, of course. Pages upon pages of painful poetry—dated, annotated, crossed out and marked over—stood between those poems that he had read, but Faramir was quite certain he would be unable to read all of them in a day. Perhaps he would never be able to read all of them, and for some reason, that woke a sense of shame in him. For I never imagined that he would write anything like this—or that Denethor could write poetry, not even for Boromir. And indeed, not once had he caught a glimpse of his brother's name, though he had leafed through the volume entire. It was Finduilas after all, who at last proved his muse. Four years and a life captured in those pages....
Two lives, Faramir realized, bowing his head. At some point during his reading, he had sunk down to sit upon the carpet, back braced against the wall, and he was grateful, suddenly, for the stolid reassurance of stone. And now what should I do with this? he wondered, staring numbly at the book clasped in trembling hands. For these are not simply grave goods: that trunk is a crypt for memory, as much a grave as any ever dug into the earth or carved into the mountains.
How to bury a stranger that he had just barely come to know, though that stranger bore the same face his father had? How to make peace with a man who had grown to love his wife so that he resented ever after the child who had weakened her? How to apologize now, at this late date, for the unspeakable crime of having survived mother and brother? The sun was riding low in the sky when, at last, Faramir sighed softly. In the end, there was but one response that he could make. And though it be a paltry answer, accept this one gift from me, Father, for it is all that I have to give!
Here follows the final page of the book of poems that Denethor, Ecthelion's son of Gondor, wrote:
For she who sought the free-soaring seabirds at night—I tried.
—the sixteenth of June of the Year 2988
And below it, in a graceful hand, stands the final verse:
For he who sought the freedom of fire in death—rest you well.
—the eighteenth of May of the Year 3019
Two lives, Faramir realized, bowing his head. At some point during his reading, he had sunk down to sit upon the carpet, back braced against the wall, and he was grateful, suddenly, for the stolid reassurance of stone. And now what should I do with this? he wondered, staring numbly at the book clasped in trembling hands. For these are not simply grave goods: that trunk is a crypt for memory, as much a grave as any ever dug into the earth or carved into the mountains.
How to bury a stranger that he had just barely come to know, though that stranger bore the same face his father had? How to make peace with a man who had grown to love his wife so that he resented ever after the child who had weakened her? How to apologize now, at this late date, for the unspeakable crime of having survived mother and brother? The sun was riding low in the sky when, at last, Faramir sighed softly. In the end, there was but one response that he could make. And though it be a paltry answer, accept this one gift from me, Father, for it is all that I have to give!
Here follows the final page of the book of poems that Denethor, Ecthelion's son of Gondor, wrote:
And below it, in a graceful hand, stands the final verse:
