one of my favorite things in this sad diminished world are those shamanistic poems/epics/histories at the start of fantasy novels

bam i have not read james btanch cabell but he is not ~on the list~

for whiney & deej in memory of their sacrifice:

awaken! wake!

from nightbound depths
what once lay hid
let it arise
to blind the day!

from tomb, a voice
from time, an hour
from pattern, form
from weakness, power

to darkness, light
in embers, flame
from dust, a tree
silence, a name

the stillness stirs,
its loss regains
what was, returns
what is, remains

kindof disappointed that nobody noticed that one of my poems was a re-version of the theme song to the nanny

lol

Iax of the ruined edge! Cold
Iax of the buried hilt. Dread
Iax of the marred brow. Born

when the sun spilled pallid and
ashen rays upon barrows pale
with lilys and a mothers tears
last witness to a soft exhale

first witness to a formless cry
a voice to shake the very base
of the pillars of the earth and
memories time cannot erase

a little too close to actual meter. turns into black metal voice in my head

the old hedge-witch's voice was iron-scraping-iron and her hand was hot and strong upon his own. "you must go to the mountains of the sun if you wish to find your answers, and there descend into the earth to find the Cyäegha, and turn his eye upon you." as her voice died he heard mara's sharp breath and leiland move sword hand to pommel and tense but it was simòn, pious simòn who spoke. "you cannot do this, my lord, it would be your death! there are things that even the Dark fear, and who love us not".

he gripped the witch's hand in his own, "i beseech you, what can i find there but my own damnation?" to which the crone replied:

HE was young when the earth was young
and was born in its fiery heart
there we drank deep its blood and was burned
and born anew

HE was young when he heard the voices
that echo faintly through the stars
and sing of the death of time and space
and so learned to speak

HE was young when Sylanā forsook the Treaty of the Moon
and was lost to wander amongst the stars forever
he heard the moìtdi war amongst themselves
and so gave refuge to their servants in his hidden halls
and broke their chains

HE was older when he taught the gwalchmmi his secrets
the truth of fire and the truth of stone
they built their cities in his shadows and gave him the green
for him they sang the Hymn of Twilight in the lost caverns
and it rang under the earth

HE was older still when the moìtdi tore open the green earth
seeking those who had defied them and fled, finding blood
and in revenge for those who had loved him he spoke with the red earth
and he drowned the lands in fire and ash
and the moìtdi perished

HE was older still when the Dark and the Light bound him
with chains of silver to the deepest rocks
in fear and hatred of the old earth's power, that had burned their children
they hung him from the stone tree, never living, never dying
he hangs there still

HE was old then when your people came to these shores
and he spoke to them through stone and soil of the ancient secrets
and when they raised the Tower of Song on the bones of the moìtdi
one eye he has still open ever seeing always watching
he waits there now

us, long earsick.
Blind, we follow
rain slant, spray flick
to fields we do not know.

Night, float us.
Offshore wind, shout,
ask the sea
what’s lost, what’s left,
what horn sunk,
what crown adrift.

Where we are who knows
of kings who sup
while day fails? Who,
swinging his axe
to fell kings, guesses
where we go?

nice!

im always a little ashamed of my posts itt

that's actually a "real poem" by basil bunting

but it always gave me a heavy CONAN vibe

if you like that you might like: http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=7500

this is an awesome thread btw

brilliant thread title

love Bunting too :)

It too dislikes I: there it lays in the shadows bound
Writhing, confined, with perfect contempt for us, under the fiery soul of the world
in the nonplace, the wall against the real
It will never die, its face will never
see light, grimace undarkened
by desire for the ending