Filed under: blank verse, epic, poetry, ragnarok | Tags: blank verse, dream, epic, fantasy, Online Writing, poem, poetry, ragnarok
“I died not,” Varr breathed shallowly, “I woke
Midmorning, by a gentle brook. How far
I’d skirmished from satanic swamplands I
Had no surmise. Three days I nursed my wounds,
And then I took the mission meant for Luke,
To warn the Old Man. As I went, I met
The soot-things marauding. I ended them
By day, and in the night I took to stealth.
But it was all for naught. The hall was gone.
Either the Soot were torchbearers, or else,
They could ignite with nothing but a touch.
Their arsonry outsped me, and my news.
Out from the ruins, thus, I set my face
To anywhere the Soot might come, to slay.
I do not hope to win. What hope of that?
But I will be defeated in a death
That will be worthy of remembrances.”
Shane thought of and rejected several ways
To say there would no need for dying be,
To say their foes would be the ones to die,
That death would be an honor, by Varr’s side,
That nothing could withstand them, and he frowned
Exasperated at this heroes’ world
For which he was unlettered. Yet ere his
Ungainly eloquence had come to him
And something epic uttered, Varr announced,
“But there! Perhaps to die is not so much.
What matters death to us already dead?
Come, brother champion, I weary you
Enough now. No more answers have I. Sleep.
Your wounds will pain you less for it, and then
Come morning we will salve your wounded pride
With chase, with skirmish, and with victory.”
Varr made Shane take the bed, for himself straw
Into a corner heaped. He would take no
Refusals. Shane could only say “I will
Repay this hospitality, I swear!”
‘Goodnight’ he did not manage, for the furs
Were soft and warm. His heartbeat echoed in
His ears as sound, his wounds as pressure-pulse,
The darkness might have been no bigger than
The outline of his body, and he mused
On how he felt more dead in sleep, than when
He waked and heard the claim that he was dead.
So sank Shane down through all of this to dream.
At first his rest was seamless, like the sleep
Slept by a child exhausted in a car
That plunges onward in the trackless night
And dives through waves of streetlamps thunder-hued
That flash across the infant eyes and stir
Them not. But as he longer slept, the furs
Began to shudder, shift, and shakily
To writhe. Shane dreamed of darkness in a ring,
An audience that stank of ashes, and
A rain of blows from every side, that he
Was powerless to raise his hands against,
From foes intangible, unheard, unseen.
Then came one to his face. His neck snapped back,
His body stiffened like an uncoiled spring,
The world burst into shards of rainbow pain,
And he was falling fast, into a pit
Drilled in an evil smelling swamp. Below
A sallow spark hung, distant, and there came
The tang of sulfur from it. Then the spark
To see him seemed, and opened, grinning rows
Of blackened shark teeth, glowing red within.
Shane twisted as he fell, then sat up sharp
Panting and nigh sweat-drowned. Upon the straw
Varr snored, the embers huddled, and the room
Was as he’d seen it last: rough stone and earth
By firefly basket lit. Yet not this bright:
The shadows had been deeper, had they not?
Shane blinked the flakes of sleep out of his brain,
And saw the extra hundred glowing spots
That streamed in through the open door, to whirl,
Encircling a figure just inside.
He wore a cloak of dirty grey, a hat
Wide-brimmed and pulled diagonally down
Across the left half of his face. His face
Was fixed illegibly between the smile
Of one upon the gallows wrongfully
Who knows his death will prove him in the right,
And that of an archangel, judging sooth
In wake of battles biblical. Shane pushed
Himself upright and raised his fists. The man
But smiled a little more, “I will not say
‘Be not afraid,’ for Shane the Champion
Fears nothing. So I say I am your friend
And hope that you will welcome me as such.
Alas, for all my warriors who survive!”
He nodded toward Varr sleeping on the floor,
“My world has been a no-man’s-land too long.
My men seek bolt holes where they may, to wait
For you, oh Champion, and know not what
They wait for. I knew not myself until
This night I saw you at the forest edge-”
So saying, he removed his hat. His hair
Was grizzled grey, and trailed forward through
The bands of thick black cloth across one eye.
Shane licked his lips, and though he dropped his fists
He kept them clenched. He made to speak
But found his tongue immobile, still in sleep,
Or paralyzed like those who dream they run
But cannot move their legs. But the Old Man
Was gone, and in his place there stood a crone.
Grandmotherly she seemed, not as if warm,
Not likely to bake cookies or knit scarves,
But august, ancient, matriarchical,
All over wisdom-written with long care
For wayward progeny that heed her not.
“You know me not, Falconi,” said she, “But
I know you well enough. Your place is not
Among this naïve band-” Then she was gone
And quick as blinking the Old Man was back
As if in cinema someone had switched
The reels of film all out of order, that
A scene to later ones transmogrified
Was, with such swiftness that the audience
Confounded quite, has blinked and missed the change.
The Old Man bent his head, as does a man,
After interruption, and said “I deem
That you may be the last intrepid soul
Who finds the earth too shallow for his deeds
And seeks his promised place here, in my lands.
You have the bearing, restlessness, and stance
That speak defiant heart enduring all.
You bare your chest before your foes, to dare
Them spill your blood. You even glare at me
As does a falcon at the falconer.
If you are last, then you are fit to make
A worthy end for us, and I am used
To watching what my wisdom calls the last-”
The old woman frowned, as if at a child
Who fidgets at his lesson, and she said,
“I think you have more anger than you know.
I think life cheated you, and gave you less
Than man needs. You left cursing at the fates
That cut you off, and wove your path, and spun
Your birth into a war you did not make
And to a world that scorned you to the last.
But hear me, there is still a home for you
But it is far beyond this petty dream
Of boys’ imagination. Leave it, come,
And find what you have yearned for all your days-”
A presence deep invisible, but grim
Like sensing suddenly that one is watched,
Grinned from behind the fire. Shane heard it not,
Nor saw it, but he felt it hating him-
The Old Man pulled his wiry beard, the hue
Of old titanium, and whispered “I
Come long ago from lands far to the north.
The winters there were long, like onto five
White winters stacked together, with no spring
Or summer in between. When food was stale,
And drink was flat, and love was merely one
More way of huddling against the cold,
My people lived on hope. I gave them hope
When all became despair. But for myself
I kept no hope or strength, nor for my cause.
I had hope hand to mouth. You are my last-”
The old woman before him stood again
Her iron-grey tresses trailing round her face,
“You are no fool, Falconi. You must know
That this is foolishness. Can but two men
Outlast the hordes infinite? Can two men,
However brave, command the tide to halt
Or stay with sword and fist a cataract?
Can two souls left alone, divorced from aid
From heaven, hell, and their own earthly clay
Endure the death of worlds, relight the sun,
And seek to slay the Sulfur Carrier?
If you would live, abandon foolishness-”
Again the Old Man stood, as if he had
Been standing talking all the while, his place
Not trading with an opposite. “I know
Your questions, Champion, but beg of you
Abandon them. Your hand is at a task
Too urgent, too immediate, too high
To hesitate in curiosity-”
“-You think you will get answers,” said the crone,
“From him? All answers are to him a chance
To pose in Spartan attitudes against
What his own posing makes from possible
To inevitable. You will be slain
And never know why, how, or who killed you-”
“-I did not seek that any of my sons
Should die. I sought that they should have a chance
To drink of glory deep, to stuff themselves
With life like lava blazing, to feel love
Not for a passing thing but for a fact:
That they had done extraordinary deeds
And no defeat or death could alter that,
Nor everlasting darkness reach that truth
That courage once had lived, and it was theirs-”
“-So if you are determined, Falconi,
To walk with suicidal fools, I wash
My hands, though most reluctantly, I own,
Of your fate. To your master I spoke truth
When I told him that all his hope was gone.
I speak the truth to you, and say the same.
Go find your hearth and home without my help
If you can. We will twice more meet again.”-
We will meet, thought the something in the fire,
And I will drink your blood while yet you live
And tear you into ribbons ere you die-.
The Old Man raised his hand, and said, “Do not
Think this speech but a dream-” The old woman
Said “Think not that you dreamed this, when you wake-”
Shane felt a hand pressed to his brow, and then
He started up, his eyes wide, and looked around.
The room was empty, and the door stood wide.
The dawn was just upwelling on the plains.
Varr stood outside, his armor standing by.
Shane lay propped on his elbows, with the furs
Bunched up across his knees. He would have thought
The past night all a dream, but that his wounds
Were healed and gone each one, with not a scar
Left on his flesh, to show where they had been.
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Songs to Setirov. 