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Prologue
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It is always the map of believing,
the white landscape
and the shrouded farms.
It is always the land of rememberance,
of sunlight fractured
in old, immovable ice,
And always the heart,
cloistered and southerly,
misgives the ice, the drifting
for something perplexed and eternal.
It will end like this,
the heart will tell you,
it will end with mammoth and glacier,
with ten thousand years
of effacing night,
and someday the scientists
rifling lakes and moraines,
will find us in evidence,
our relics the outside of history,
but your story, whole and hollowed, will end
at the vanishing edge of your hand.
So says the heart
in its intricate cell,
charting with mirrors
the unchartable land
of remembrance and rivers and ice.
This time it was different:
the town had surrendered
to the hooded snow,
the houses and taverns
were awash in the fragmented light,
and the lake was marbled
with unstable ice,
as I walked through drifts
through lulling spirits,
content with the slate of the sky
and the prospect of calendared spring.
It will end like this,
the winter proclaimed,
sooner or later
in dark, inaccessible ice,
and you are the next one
to hear this story,
winter and winter
occluding the heart,
and there in Wisconsin,
mired by the snow
and by vanishing faith,
it did not seem bad
that the winter was taking
all light away,
that the darkness seemed welcome
and the last, effacing snow.
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He stood in the midst
of frozen automobiles,
cars lined like cenotaphs.
In a bundle of coats
and wool hats and mufflers
he rummaged the trunk
for God know what,
and I knew his name
by the misted spectacles,
the caved, ridiculous
hat he was wearing,
And whether the courage
was spring in its memory,
was sunlight in promise
or whiskeyed shade,
or something aligned
beyond snow and searching,
it was with me that moment
as I spoke to him there;
in my days I am thankful
it stood me that moment
as I spoke to the bundled
weaver of accidents,
the everyday wizard
in search of impossible spring.
Tracy, I told him, poetry lies
in the seams of the story,
in old recollections and prospect
of what might always and never be
(And those were the words
I did not say, but poetry lies
in the prospect of what should have been:
you must believe that I said these words
past denial, past history),
and there in the winter
the first song began,
the moons twined and beckoned
on the borders of Krynn,
the country of snow
resolved to the grasslands
more brilliant and plausible.
And the first song continued
through prospects of summer,
where the promise returns
from the vanished seed,
where the staff returns
from forgetful deserts,
and even the northern lands
cry out to the spirit,
this is the map
of believing fulfilled;
this is the map of belief.
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Kitiara's Son
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At the edge of the world
the juggler wanders,
sightless and pathless,
trusting the venerable
breadth of his jugglers hands.
He wanders the edge
of a long-ago story,
juggling moons,
parading the fixed
anonymous stars in his passage.
Something like instinct
and something like agate
hard and transparent
in the depths of his reflexes
channels the objects
to life in the air:
stilettos and bottles,
wooden pins and ornaments
the seen and the unseen-all reassemble
translated to light and dexterity.
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It is this version of light we steer by:
constellations of memory
and a chemistry born
in the blood's alembic,
where motive and metaphor
and the impulse of night
are annealed by the morning
into our countenance,
into the whorls
of our surfacing fingers.
Something in each of us
yearns for this balance,
for the vanished chemistries
that temper the steel.
The best of all jugglery
lies in the truces
that shape our intention
out of knives, out of filament
out of half-empty bottles
and mirrors and chemistries,
and from the forgotten
one of the night.
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The Legacy
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Always the son
in that oldest of stories,
sport of the blood
in its natural turning,
the charmed one, least likely
to end up heroic,
captures the crown
and the grail and the princess.
Suddenly, out of the shires of concealment
the least likely son
perseveres and arises
after veiling his heart
through the hooded night,
and his unmasked glory
of grail and of jewelry
effaces the moment
before the beginning of stories,
when the galvanic heartbeat
contended with ice and illusion,
when the world was a country
of mirrors and brothers,
and harmony broke
on the long effacement of days.
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It is brothers like these
whom poetry touches,
who are handy with visions
instead of with swords,
whose pale light is hidden
in the cloud of their knowing.
But for each who emerges
past wounds and obscurity,
for each who negotiates
bramble and dragon and wizard,
there is another forever forgotten
conceded and wed
to the language of brothers,
lost in the bloodline
of sword and money
in the old palindrome of the spirit.
It is brothers like these
that the poets sing,
for their baffled courage
and the water's solace
for the one in the bramble
and the failed inheritance,
it is for these that the ink is drying,
it is for these
that the angels come.
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"Wanna Bet?"
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The mythologists tell you
how the journey takes place
in a landscape of spirit.
But there is also a highway,
dusty and palpable,
and washed-out bridges
that harbor a navy of trolls,
overpriced inns full of vermin,
and signposts half twisted
by vandals and travelers
searching for something to do.
This is the road
out of which the myth rises
when suddenly bridges
most suspect and ramshackle
waver and gable with light.
It is then you are saying
this must be the answer
the crossroad is more than a crossroad
the wayside numinous
littered with symbols.
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That is the story
when the bridge collapses,
when your abstracted ankle
twists in the rutted road.
It is the tale
that the trolls choose always,
for the danger of myth
is in too much meaning.
Sometimes the stars
or the steepled cloud
is sufficient in gas or vapor,
the road is dust
leading out of belief
and the markers are stone upon stone.
It is then, in the fundamental time,
your travel lies waiting before you.
It is the long house
of all mythology,
what they cannot explain
nor explain away.
It is where journeys begin.
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Raistlin's
Daughter
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The first sign of the change
is not the golden eye
nor the dangerous stature
the countenance of hill and desert,
instead it is the child's breath
the chill of water underground
the cry at night a memory of knives
and you startle
sit up in bed and say
this is something I have made
somehow I have made this thing.
So you fear it away
let the night cover your dream
and the red moon wades
through a hundred journeys
jostled in blood
in the coded vein,
and then the arrivals
rending the edge of belief
a vacancy in play
the abstract smile
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that has nothing to do
with whatever you did
and you know that your wishes
can never conceal
the long recollection of elsewhere.
The cuckoo's story, the supplanted nest
the egg left in care of unwary others.
Surely its child is alien, elfshot,
stolen by gypsies, forever another,
and yet, in the accident
of blood and adoption,
as it was in your time
and the time of your mothers,
forever and always your own.
So sing to the stranger this lullaby
Sing the inventions of family
the fiction of brothers
the bardic ruse of the father
Sing the mother concocted of reasons and light,
Sing to me, golden-eyed daughter.
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The Sacrifice
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A child deeply wanted,
a son of the midlife,
the only daughter
with the father's eyes,
for you, dear children,
we build these castles
that the walls may encircle
your borrowed lives.
Surrounded by stone,
by tower and crenel ,
there is no courage
that is not stone,
and drawbridge and battlement,
merlon and parapet
assemble to keep you
redeemed and alone.
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0 child well-loved,
0 son of the midlife,
who measured the tendon
in the span of your hand?
And glittering daughter,
image of memory,
is the heart of your blossoming
apportioned and plannned?
Where is your country
and where are your people?
Where the unblessed
discontentment with walls?
Where is the siegecraft
of heart and autonomy,
encircling the castle
as the battlement falls?
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Epilogue
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A prospect of birds
in the cancelling winter,
first fables of prophets
and roses and swords,
Margaret believed in us all, believed in our stories:
a patient astronomer
drawn by a gap in the sky
who knows from a thousand years' calculation
that the next star is coming
that all that remains
is the waiting and prayer
and the long tiring business
of notebook and telescope,
until the brightness
consumes the dark,
a brightness conceived
and cradled for centuries,
she can say this is something
I have always expected
this is the harvest of years
And then when she speaks
the heavens remember
that she was the one
bearing money and flower s
and trips to the city, incandescence of fireworks
when we gathered in dozens
on the summer nights
by the vanishing lake,
and most of all words
she brought us
arrayed like galaxies
into the forms of belief.
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At home by the lake
she began the story,
building word after difficult word
until in the telling the world appeared,
until in the waters the stars came down,
and all of the planets
the heavens encircle -
Chislev and Zivilyn ,
Raistlin and Caramon,
Palin and Tanin,
Raou1 and the little one,
the trining moons
that herald the tides of her magic,
all in the choir of her memory,
where the voice of love
moved on the water
and sang in attendance
as the story rose
out of the lake and the midnight,
the attar of roses
on the farthest shore,
and the winter reverted
to incredible spring
as it always reverts,
and the snow and the spirits
went where they wish
in the lands of belief
as the story begins again.
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Huma's Song
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Sularus Humah durvey
Karamnes Humah durvey
Draco!
Solamnis na fai tarus
Mi thas!
Est paxum kudak draco
Draco-Humah
oparu sac
Draco-Humah
coni parl ai fam
Saat mas Solamis
vegri nough
Coni est Lor Tarikan
Sularus Humah
Karram Humah
Solamnis Humah durvey
Karamnes Humah durvey
Mi thas!
Humah dix karai!
Ex dix!
Oparu est dix!
Solamnis Lor Alan Paladine!
Humah mithas est mithasah!
Draco-Humah durvey!
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The Honor of Huma survives
The Glory of Huma survives
Dragons, hear!
Solamnic breath is taken
Life; hear!
My sword is broken of Dragons
Dragon-Huma
temper me now
Dragon-Huma
Grant me grace and love
When the heart of the Knighthood
wavers in doubt
Grant me this, Warrior Lord
Honor is Huma
Glory is Huma
Solamnic Knight Huma survives
Glorified Huma survives
Life; hear!
Huma's death calls me!
His death!
Temper me with such death!
Paladine, lord god of knights!
Huma's life is all our lives!
Dragon-Huma survives!
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