| |
|
|
Canticle of the Dragon
|
|
|
|
Hear the sage as his song descends
like heaven's rain or tears,
and washes the years, the dust of many stories
from the High Tale of the Dragonlance.
For in ages deep, past memory and word,
in the first blush of the world
when the three moons rose from the lap of the forest,
dragons, terrible and great,
made war on this world of Krynn.
Yet out of the darkness of dragons,
out of our cries for 1ight
in the blank face of the black moon soaring,
a banked light flared in Solamnia,
a knight of truth and of power,
who called down the gods themselves
and forged the mighty Dragonlance, piercing the soul
of dragonkind, driving the shade of their wings
from the brightening shores of Krynn.
Thus Huma, Knight of Solamnia, Lightbringer, First Lancer,
followed his light to the foot of the Khalkist Mountains,
to the stone feet of the gods,
to the crouched silence of their temple.
He called down the Lancemakers, he took on
their unspeakable power to crush the unspeakable evil,
to thrust the coiling darkness
back down the tunnel of the dragon's throat.
Paladine, the Great God of Good, shone at the side of Huma,
strengthening the lance of his strong right arm,
and Huma, ablaze in a thousand moons,
banished the Queen of Darkness,
banished the swarm of her shrieking hosts
back to the senseless kingdom of death, where their curses
swooped upon nothing and nothing
deep below the brightening land.
|
|
Thus ended in thunder the Age of Dreams
and began the Age of Might,
when Istar, kingdom of light and truth, arose in the east,
where minarets of white and gold
spired to the sun and to the sun's glory,
announcing the passing of evil,
and Istar, who mothered and cradled the long summers of good,
shone like a meteor
in the white skies of the just.
Yet in the fullness of sunlight
the Kingpriest of Istar saw shadows;
At night he saw the trees as things with daggers, the streams
blackened and thickened under the silent moon.
He searched books for the path of Huma,
for scrolls, signs, and spells
so that he, too, might summon the gods, might find
their aid in his holy aims,
might purge the world of sin.
Then came the time of dark and death
as the gods turned from the world.
A mountain of fire crashed like a comet through Istar,
the city split like a skull in the flames,
mountains burst from once-fertile valleys,
seas poured into the graves of mountains,
the deserts sighed on abandoned floors of the seas,
the highways of Krynn erupted
and became the paths of the dead.
Thus began the Age of Despair.
The roads were tangled.
The winds and the sandstorms dwelt in the husks of cities,
The plains and mountains became our home.
As the old gods lost their power,
we called to the blank sky
into the cold, dividing gray to the ears of new gods.
The sky is calm, silent, unmoving.
We have yet to hear their answer.
|
|
|
| |
|
|
Goldmoon's Song
|
|
|
|
The grasslands are endless,
And summer sings on,
And Goldmoon the princess
Loves a poor man''s son.
Her father the chieftain
Makes long roads between them;
The grasslands are endless, and summer sings on.
The grasslands are waving,
The sky's rim is gray,
The chieftain sends Riverwind
East and away,
To search for strong magic
At the lip of the morning,
The grasslands are waving, the sky's rim is gray.
0 Riverwind, where have you gone?
0 Riverwind, autumn comes on.
I sit by the river
And look to the sunrise,
But the sun rises over the mountains alone.
|
|
The grasslands are fading,
The summer wind dies,
He comes back, the darkness
Of stones in his eyes.
He carries a blue staff
As bright as a glacier;
The grasslands are fading, the summer wind dies.
The grasslands are fragile,
As yellow as f1ame ,
The chieftain makes mockery
Of Riverwind's claim.
He orders the people
To stone the young warrior:
The grasslands are fragile, as yellow as flame.
The grassland has faded,
And autumn is here.
The girl joins her lover,
The stones whistle near,
The staff flares in blue light
And both of them vanish;
The grasslands are faded, and autumn is her
|
|
|
| |
|
|
Kender Trailsong
|
|
|
|
Your one true love's a sailing ship
That anchors at our pier.
We lift her sails, we man her decks,
We scrub the portholes clear;
And yes, our lighthouse shines for her,
And yes, our shores are warm;
We steer her into harbor-
Any port in a storm.
|
|
The sailors stand upon the docks,
The sailors stand in line,
As thirsty as a dwarf for gold
Or centaurs for cheap wine.
For all the sailors love her,
And flock to where she's moored,
Each man hoping that he might
Go down, all hands on board.
|
|
|
| |
|
|
Funeral
Song for Solamnic Knights
|
|
|
|
|
Return this man to Huma's breast
Beyond the wild, impartial skies;
Grant him a warrior's rest
And set the last spark of his eyes
Free from the smothering clouds of wars,
Upon the torches of the stars.
Let the last surge of his breath
Take refuge in the cradling air
Above the dreams of ravens, where
Only the hawk remembers death.
Then let his shade to Huma rise,
Beyond the wild, impartial skies.
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
Elvenhome
|
|
|
|
The Sun
The splendid eye
Of all our heavens
Dives from the day,
And leaves
The dozing sky,
Spangled with fireflies,
Deepening in gray.
Now Sleep,
Our oldest friend,
Lulls in the trees
And calls
Us in.
The Leaves
Give off cold fire,
They blaze into ash
At the end of the year.
And birds
Coast on the winds,
And wheel to the North
When Autumn ends.
The day grows dark,
The seasons bare,
But we
Await the sun's
Green fire upon
The trees.
|
|
The wind
Dives through the days
By seasons, by moon
Great kingdoms arise.
The breath
Of firefly, of bird,
Of trees, of mankind
Fades in a word.
Now Sleep,
Our oldest friend,
Lulls in the trees
And calls
Us in.
The Age,
The thousand lives
Of men and their stories
Go to their graves.
But We,
The people long
In poem and g1ory
Fade from the song.
|
|
|
| |
|
|
Wedding Song
|
|
|
|
Goldmoon:
Wars have settled on the North
and dragons ride the skies,
"Now is the time for wisdom,"
say the wise and nearly wise.
"Here in the heart of battle,
the time to be brave is at hand.
Now most things are larger than
the promise of woman to man."
But you and I, through burning plains,
through darkness of the earth,
affirm this world, its people,
the heavens that gave them birth,
the breath that passes between us,
this altar where we stand,
all those things made larger by
the promise of woman to man.
|
|
Riverwind:
Now in the belly of winter,
when ground and sky are gray,
here in the heart of sleeping snow,
now is the time to say
yes to the sprouting vallenwood
in the green countryside,
for these things are far larger than
a man's word to his bride.
Through these promises we keep,
forged in the yawning night,
proved in the presence of heroes
and the prospect of spring light,
the children will see moons and stars
where now the dragons ride,
and humble things made larger by
a man's word to his bride.
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
Song of Huma
|
|
|
|
Out of the village, out of the thatched and clutching shires,
Out of the grave and furrow, furrow and grave,
where his sword first tried
The last cruel dances of childhood, and awoke to the shires
Forever retreating, his greatness a marshfire,
The banked flight of the Kingfisher always above him,
Now Huma walked upon Roses,
In the level Light of the Rose.
And troubled by Dragons, he turned to the end of the land,
To the fringe of all sense and senses,
To the wilderness, where Paladine bade him to turn,
And there in the loud tunnel of knives
He grew in unblemished violence, in yearning,
Stunned into himself by a deafening gauntlet of voices.
It was there and then that the white Stag found him,
At the end of a journey planned from the shores of Creation,
And all the time staggered at the forest edge
Where Huma, haunted and starving,
Drew his bow, thanking the gods for their bounty and keeping,
Then saw, in the ranged wood,
In the first silence, the dazed hearts symbol,
The rack of antlers resplendent.
He lowered the bow and the world resumed.
Then Huma followed the Stag, its tangle of antlers receding
As a memory of young light, as the talons of birds ascending.
The Mountains crouched before them. Nothing would change now,
The three moons stopped in the sky,
And the long night tumbled into shadows.
It was morning when they reached the grove,
The lap of the mountain, where the Stag departed,
Nor did Huma follow, knowing the end of this journey
Was nothing but green and the promise of green that endured
In the eyes of the woman before him.
And holy the days he drew near her, holy the air
That carried his words of endearment, his forgotten songs,
And the rapt moons knelt on the Great Mountain.
Still, she eluded him, bright and retreating as marshfire,
Nameless and lovely, more lovely because she was nameless,
As they learned that the world, the dazzling shelves of the
air,
The wilderness itself
Were plain and diminished things to the hearts thicket.
At the end of the days, she told him her secret.
For she was not of woman, nor was she mortal,
But the daughter and heiress from a line of Dragons.
For Huma the sky turned indifferent, cluttered by moons,
The brief life of the grass mocked him, mocked his fathers,
And the thorned light bristled on the gliding Mountain.
But nameless she tendered a hope not in her keeping,
That Paladine only might answer, that through his enduring wisdom
She might step from forever, and there in her silver arms
The promise of the grove might arise and flourish.
For that wisdom Huma prayed, and the Stag returned,
And east, through the desolate fields, through ash,
Through cinders and blood, the harvest of dragons,
Traveled Huma, cradled by dreams of the Silver Dragon,
The Stag perpetual, a signal before him.
At last the eventual harbor, a temple so far to the east
That it lay where the east was ending.
There Paladine appeared
In a pool of stars and glory, announcing
That of all choices, one most terrible had fallen to Huma.
For Paladine knew that the heart is a nest of yearnings,
That can travel forever toward light, becoming
What we can never be.
For the bride of Huma could step into the devouring sun,
Together they would return to the thatched shires
And leave behind the secret of the Lance, the world
Unpeopled in darkness, wed to the dragons.
Or Huma could take on the Dragonlance, cleansing all of Krynn
Of death and invasion, of the green paths of his love.
|
|
The hardest of choices, and Huma remembered
How the Wilderness cloistered and baptized his first thoughts
Beneath the sheltering sun, and now
As the black moon wheeled and pivoted, drawing the air
And the substance from Krynn, from the things of Krynn,
From the grove, from the Mountain, from the abondoned shires,
He would sleep, he would send it al1 away,
For the choosing was all of the pain, and the choices
Were heat on the hand when the arm has been severed.
But she came to him, weeping and luminous,
In a landscape of dreams, where he saw
The world collapse and renew on the glint of the Lance.
In her farewell lay collapse and renewal.
Through his doomed veins the horizon burst.
He took up the Dragonlance, he took up the story,
The pale heat rushed through his rising arm
And the sun and the three moons, waiting for wonders,
Hung in the sky together.
To the West Huma rode, to the High C1erist"s Tower
On the back of the Silver Dragon,
And the path of their flight crossed over a desolate country
Where the dead walked only, mouthing the names of dragons.
And the men in the Tower, surrounded and riddled by dragons,
By the cries of the dying, the roar in the ravenous air,
Awaited the unspeakable silence,
Awaited far worse, in fear that the crash of the senses
Would end in a moment of nothing
Where the mind lies down with its losses and darkness.
But the winding of Huma's horn in the distance
Danced on the battlements. All of Solamnia lifted
Its face to the eastern sky, and the dragons
Wheeled to the highest air, believing
Some terrible change had come.
From out of their tumult of wings, out of the chaos of dragons,
Out of the heart of nothing, the Mother of Night,
Aswirl in a blankness of colors,
Swooped to the East, into the stare of the sun
And the sky collapsed into silver and blankness.
On the ground Huma lay, at his side a woman,
Her silver skin broken, the promise of green
Released from the gifts of her eyes. She wispered her name
As the Queen of Darkness banked in the sky above Huma.
She descended, the Mother of Night,
And from the loft of her battlements, men saw shadows
Boil on the colorless dive of her wings;
A hovel of thatch and rushes, the heart of a Wilderness,
A lost silver light spattered in terrible crimson,
And then from the center of shadows
Came a depth in which darkness itself was aglimmer,
Denying all air, all light, all shadows.
And thrusting his lance into emptiness,
Huma fell to the sweetness of death, into abiding sunlight.
Through the Lance, through the dear might and brotherhood
Of those who must walk to the end of the breath and the senses,
He banished the dragons back to the core of nothing,
And the long lands blossomed in balance and music.
Stunned in new freedom, stunned by the brightness and colors,
By the harped blessing of the holy winds,
The Knights carried Huma, they carried the Dragonlance
To the grove in the lap of the Mountain.
Uhen they returned to the grove in pilgrimage, in homage,
The Lance, the armor, the Dragonbane himself
Had vanished to the day's eye.
But the night of the full moons red and silver
Shines down on the hills, on the forms of a man and a woman
Shimmering steel and silver, silver and steel,
Above the village, over the thatched and nurturing shires.
|
|
|
| |
|
|
Song of the Nine Heroes
|
Back
to Top |
|
|
|
From the north came danger, as we knew it would:
In the vanguard of winter, a dragon's dance
Unraveled the land, until out of the forest,
Out of the plains they came, from the mothering earth,
The sky unreckoned before them.
Nine they were, under the three moons,
Under the autumn twilight:
As the world declined, they arose
Into the heart of the story.
One from a garden of stone arising,
From dwarf-halls, from weather and wisdom,
Where the heart and mind ride unquestioned
In the untapped vein of the hand.
In his fathering arms, the spirit gathered.
Nine they were, under the three moons,
Under the autumn twilight:
As the world declined, they arose
Into the heart of the story.
One from a haven of breezes descending,
Light in the handling air,
To the waving meadows, the kender's country,
Where the grain out of smallness arises itself
To grow green and golden and green again.
Nine they were, under the three moons,
Under the autumn twilight:
As the world declined, they arose
Into the heart of the story.
The next from the plains, the long land's keeping,
Nurtured in distance, horizons of nothing.
Bearing a blue crystal staff she came, and a burden
Of mercy and light converged in her hand:
Bearing the wounds of the world, she came.
Nine they were, under the three moons,
Under the autumn twilight:
As the world declined, they arose
Into the heart of the story.
The next from the plains, in the moon's shadow,
Through custom, through ritual, trailing the moon
Where her phases, her wax and her wane, controlled
The tide of his blood, and his warrior's hand
Ascended through hierarchies of space into light.
Nine they were, under the three moons,
Under the autumn twilight:
As the world declined, they arose
Into the heart of the story.
One within absences, known by departures,
The dark swordswoman at the heart of the fire:
Her glories the space between words,
The cradlesong recollected in age,
Recalled at the edge of awakening and thought.
Nine they were, under the three moons,
Under the autumn twilight:
As the world declined, they arose
Into the heart of the story.
|
|
One in the heart of honor, formed by the sword,
By the centuries' flight of the kingfisher over the land,
By Solamnia ruined and risen, rising again
When the heart ascends into duty.
As it dances, the sword is forever an heirloom.
Nine they were, under the three moons,
Under the autumn twilight:
As the world declined, they arose
Into the heart of the story.
The next in a simple light a brother to darkness,
Letting the sword hand try all subleties,
Even the intricate webs of the heart. His thoughts
Are pools disrupted in changing wind-
He cannot see their bottom.
Nine they were, under the three moons,
Under the autumn twilight:
As the world declined, they arose
Into the heart of the story.
The next the leader, half-elven, betrayed
As the twining blood pulls asunder the land,
The forests, the worlds of elves and men.
Called into bravery, but fearing for love,
And fearing that, called into both, he does nothing.
Nine they were, under the three moons,
Under the autumn twilight:
As the world declined, they arose
Into the heart of the story.
The last from darkness, breathing the night
Where the abstract stars hide a nest of words,
Where the body endures the wound of numbers,
Surrendered to knowledge, until, unable to bless,
His blessing falls on the low, the benighted.
Nine they were, under the three moons,
Under the autumn twilight:
As the world declined, they arose
Into the heart of the story.
Joined by others they were in the telling:
A graceless girl, graced beyond the graces;
A princess of seeds and saplings, called to the forest;
An ancient weaver of accidents;
Nor can we say who the story will gather.
Nine they were, under the three moons,
Under the autumn twilight:
As the world declined, they arose
Into the heart of the story.
From the north came danger, as we knew it would:
In encampments of winter, the dragon''s sleep
Has settled the land, but out of the forest,
Out of the plains they come, from the mothering earth
Defining the sky before them.
Nine they were, under the three moons,
Under the autumn twilight:
As the world declined, they arose
Into the heart of the story.
|
|
|
| |
|
|
Song of the Ice Reaver
|
Back to
Top |
|
|
|
I am the
one who brought them back.
I am Raggart I am telling you this.
Snow upon snow cancels the signals of ice
Over the snow the sun bleeds whiteness
In cold light forever unbearable.
And if I do not tell you this
The snow descends on the deeds of heroes
And their strength in my singing
Lies down in a core of frost rising no more
No more as the lost breath crumbles.
Seven they were from the hot lands
(I am the one who brought them back)
Four swordsmen sworn in the North
The elf-woman Laurana
The dwarf from the floes of stone
The kender small-boned as a hawk.
Riding three blades they came to the tunnel
To the throat of the only castle.
Down among Thanoi the old guardians
where their swordsmen carved hot air
Finding tendon finding bone
As the tunnels melted red.
Down upon minotaur upon ice bear
And the swords whistled again
Bright on the corner of madness
The tunnel knee-high in arms
In claws in unspeakable things
As the swordsmen descended
Bright stream freezing behind them.
Then to the chambers at the castle heart
Where Feal-thas awaited lord of dragons and wolves
Armored in white that is nothing
That covers the ice as the sun bleeds whiteness.
And he called on the wolves the baby-stealers
Who suckled on murder in the lairs of ancestors.
Around the heroes a circle of knives of craving
As the wolves stalked in their master's eye.
|
|
And Aran the first to break the circle
Hot wind at the throat of Feal-thas
Brought down and unraveled
In the reel of the hunt perfected.
Brian the next when the sword of the wolf lord
Sent him seeking the warm lands.
All stood frozen in the wheel of razors
All stood frozen except for Laurana.
Blind in a hot light flashing the crown of the mind
Where death melts in a diving sun
She takes up the Ice Reaver
And over the boil of wolves over the slaughter
Bearing a blade of ice bearing darkness
She opened the throat of the wolf lord
And the wolves fell silent as the head collapsed.
The rest is short in the telling.
Destroying the eggs the violent get of the dragons
A tunnel of scales and ordure
Followed into the terrible larder
Followed further followed to treasure.
There the orb danced blue danced white
Swelled like a heart in its endless beating
(They let me hold it I brought them back).
Out from the tunnel blood on blood under the ice
Bearing their own incredible burden
The young knights silent and tattered
They came five now only
The kender last small pockets bulging.
I am Raggart I am telling you this.
I am the one who brought them back.
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Solamnic Death Chant
|
Back to
Top |
|
|
|
|
Return this man to Huma's breast:
Let him be lost in sunlight,
In the chorus of air where breath is translated;
At the sky's border receive him.
Beyond the wild, impartial skies
Have you set your lodgings,
In cantonments of stars, where the sword aspires
In an arc of yearning, where we join in singing.
Grant to him a warrior's rest.
Above our singing, above song itself,
May the ages of peace converge in a day,
May he dwell in the heart of Paladine.
And set the last spark of his eyes
In a fixed and holy place
Above words and the borrowed land too loved
As we recount the ages.
Free from the smothering clouds of war
As he once rose in infancy,
The long world possible and bright before him,
Lord Huma, deliver him.
Upon the torches of stars
was mapped the immaculate glory of childhood;
From that wronged and nestling country,
Lord Huma, deliver him.
Let the last surge of his breath
Perpetuate wine, the attar of flowers;
From the vanguard of love, the last to surrender,
Lord Huma, deliver him.
|
|
Take refuge in the cradling air
From the heart of the sword descending,
From the weight of battle on battle;
Lord Huma, deliver him.
Above the dreams of ravens where
His dreams first tried a rest beyond changing,
From the yearning for war and the war''s ending,
Lord Huma, deliver him.
Only the hawk remembers death
In a late country; from the dusk,
From the fade of the senses, we are thankful that you,
Lord Huma, deliver him.
Then let his shade to Huma rise
Out of the body of death, of the husk unraveling;
From the lodging of mind upon nothing, we are thankful that you,
Lord Huma, deliver him.
Beyond the wild, impartial skies
Have you set your lodgings,
In cantonments of stars, where the sword aspires
In an arc of yearning, where we join in singing.
Return this man to Huma's breast
Beyond the wild, impartial skies;
Grant to him a warrior's rest
And set the last spark of his eyes
Free from the smothering clouds of wars
Upon the torches of the stars.
Let the last surge of his breath
Take refuge in the cradling air
Above the dreams of ravens where
Only the hawk remembers death.
Then let his shade to Huma rise
Beyond the wild, impartial skies.
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Kitiara, of all the Days
|
Back to
Top |
|
|
|
|
Kitiara, of all the days these days
are rocked in dark and waiting, in regret.
The clouds obscure the city as I write this,
delaying thought and sunlight, as the streets
hang between day and darkness. I have waited
past all decision, past the heart in shadows
to tell you this.
In absences you grew
more beautiful, more poisonous, you were
an attar of orchids in the swimming night,
where passion, like a shark drawn down a bloodstream,
murders four senses, only taste preserving,
buckling into itself, finding the blood its own,
a small wound first, but as the shark unravels
the belly tatters in the long throats tunnel.
And knowing this, the night still seems a richness,
a gauntlet of desires ending in peace,
I would still be part of all these allurements,
and to my arms I would take in the darkness,
blessed and renamed by pleasure;
|
|
but the 1ight,
the light, my Kitiara, when the sun
spangles the rain-gorged sidewalks, and the oil
from doused lamps rises in the sunstruck water,
splintering the light to rainbows! I arise,
and though the storm resettles on the city,
I think of Sturm, Laurana, and the others,
but Sturm the foremost, who can see the sun
straight through the fog and cloudrack. How could I
abandon these?
And so into the shadow,
and not your shadow but the eager grayness
expecting light, I ride the storm away.
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
The Knight of the Black Rose
|
Back to
Top |
|
|
|
And in
the climate of dreams
when you recall her, when the world of the dream
expands, wavers in light,
when you stand at the edge of blessedness and sun,
Then we shall make you remember,
shall make you live again
through the long denial of body
For you were first in the light's hollow,
expanding like a stain, a cancer
For you were the shark in the slowed water
beginning to move
For you were the notched head of a snake,
sensing forever warmth and form
For you were inexplicable death in the crib,
the long house in betrayal
And you were more terrible than this
in a loud alley of visions,
for you passed through unharmed, unchanging
As the women screamed, unraveling silence,
halving the door of the world,
bringing forth monsters
|
|
As a child opened in
parabolas of fire
There at the borders
of two lands burning
As the world split, wanting to swallow you back
willing to give up everything
to lose you in darkness.
You passed through these unharmed, unchanging,
but now you see them
strung on our words-on your own conceiving
as you pass from night-to awareness of night
to know that hatred is the calm of philosophers
that its price is forever
that it draws you through meteors
through winter's transfixion
through the blasted rose
through the sharks' water
through the black compression of oceans
through rock-through magma
to yourself-to an abscess of nothing
that you will recognize as nothing
that you will know is coming again and again
under the same rules.
|
|
| |
|
Kender Mourning Song
|
Back
to Top |
|
Always
before, the spring returned.
The bright world in its cycle spun
In air and flowers, grass and -fern,
Assured and cradled by the sun.
Always before, you could explain
The turning darkness of the earth,
And how that dark embraced the rain,
And gave the ferns and flowers birth.
|
|
Already I forget those
things,
And how a vein of gold survives
The mining of a thousand springs,
The seasons of a thousand lives.
Now winter is my memory,
Now autumn, now the summer light-
So every spring from now will be
Another season into night.
|
|
| |
|
Raistlin's Farewell
|
Back to
Top |
|
|
|
Caramon,
the gods have tricked the world
In absences, in gifts, and all of us
Are housed within their cruelties. The wit
That was our heritage, they lodged in me,
Enough to see all differences; the light
In Tika"s eye when she looks elsewhere,
The tremble in Laurana's voice when she
Speaks to Tanis, and the graceful sweep
Of Goldmoon's hair at Riverwind''s approach.
They look at me, and even with your mind
I could discern the difference. Here I sit,
A body frail as bird bones.
In return
The gods teach us compassion, teach us mercy,
That compensation. Sometimes they succeed,
For I have felt the hot spit of injustice
Turn through those too weak to fight their brothers
For sustenance or love, and in that feeling
The pain lulled and diminished to a glow,
I pitied as you pitied, and in that
Rose above the weakest of the litter.
You, my brother, in your thoughtless grace,
That special world in which the sword arm spins
The wild arc of ambition and the eye
Gives flawless guidance to the flawless hand,
You cannot follow me, cannot observe
The landscape of cracked mirrors in the soul,
The aching hollowness in sleight of hand.
And yet you love me, simple as the rush
And balance of our blindly mingled blood,
Or as a hot sword arching through the snow;
It is the mutual need that puzzles you,
The deep complexity lodged in the veins.
|
|
Wild in the dance of battle, when you stand,
A shield before your brother, it is then
Your nourishment arises from the heart
Of all my weaknesses.
When I am gone,
Where will you find the fullness of your blood?
Backed in the heart's loud tunnels?
I have heard
The Queen's soft lullaby, Her serenade
And call to battle mingling in the night;
This music calls me to my quiet throne
Deep in Her senseless kingdom.
Dragonlords Thought to bring the darkness into light,
Corrupt it with the mornings and the moons-
In balance is a11 purity destroyed,
But in voluptuous darkness lies the truth,
The final, graceful dance.
But not for you;
You cannot follow me into the night,
Into the maze of sweetness. For you stand
Cradled by the sun, in solid lands,
Expecting nothing, having lost your way
Before the road becomes unspeakable.
It is beyond explaining, and the words
Will make you stumble. Tanis is your friend,
My little orphan, and he will explain
Those things he glimpses in the shadow's path,
For he knew Kitiara and the shine
Of the dark moon upon her darkest hair,
And yet he cannot threaten, for the night
Breathes in a moist wind on my waiting face.
|
|
|
|
| |
|
To Sojourners in Krynn
|
Back to
Top |
|
|
|
May your Sword never break.
May your Armor never rust.
May the Three Moons guide your Magic.
May your Prayers be heard.
May your Beard grow long.
May your Life Quest never blow up in your face.
May your Hoopak sing.
May your Homeland prosper.
May Dragons fly ever in your Dreams.
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
The Bard Foretells
|
Back
to Top |
|
|
In southernmost country
where the Icewall rises in
pale and seasonal sun,
where the legends freeze
in remembered dew and
the downed mercury,
they ready the long vats
in memory's custom
pouring gold, pouring amber,
the old distillations
of grain, and bardic blood
and ice and remembrance
And into the waters the bard descends
into gold, into amber all
the while listening
to the dark amniosis
of current and memory
flowing about him,
until the lung, the dilating heart
give way in the waters until
he fills with listening
and the world rushes into him
deeper than thought,
and he drowns
or addles, or emerges a bard.
In the north it is done otherwise:
wisely under the moon where the phases labor
Out of darkness to the light
of coins and mirrors
in abundant freedoms of air.
I heard you were strangers
to the wronged country
where the bards descend,
to the waters where faith
transforms into vision,
to the night's elixir,
|
|
to the last drowning breath
given over to memory
where poetry comes, solitary.
I heard you were strangers
in the merciful north,
that Hylo, Solamnia,
and a dozen unnamable provinces
cleansed you past envy,
past loneliness.
Then the waters told me the truth:
how much you remember your deaths
where the halves of a kingdom
unite in a lost terrain,
how you pass like moons, red
and silver,
your destination celestial west,
an alliance of mercy and light.
From the outset the heavens
had this in mind, a passage through
darkness and suspect country,
its vanishing point in sunlight
in the air and the earth's
horizons-
not drowning, nor the harp's flood.
0 you have never forgotten
the bard's immersion,
the country of sleep,
the time preceding the birth of the worlds.
Where all of us waited
in the mothering dark,
in the death that the card foretells,
but alone and together you ride
into the dying the dying
the story that means we are starting again...
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Krynnwoman.com does not publish any of the
products listed here. Though every effort has been made to ensure
that all information is accurate, Krynnwoman.com cannot guarantee
the accuracy of these listings. All works listed herein are copyright
©Wizards of the Coast and/or TSR. Product graphics are representational
only and are copyright ©Wizards of the Coast and/or TSR.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
