Tolkein’s world of fabled creatures
did not speak to me
of my own sense of purpose,
or responsibility
and so its strange translation
onto film I did not mind;
except the Ents and Bombadil,
who Jackson left behind.
But Earthsea, in which my own life
found endless parallel,
and traced a journey like my own
through a personal hell,
when wrought onscreen seemed stale and trite,
its lessons left unspoke,
and mists around its message
lost, somewhere on a fake Roke.
13 DEC 2004
