DREGINIABETH

 

 

 

Lo!

We have found the tale of the former age

And the lore and the legends like eagles’ wings.

We have read of royalty on many a rich page

And heard in the harping, of heroes and kings.

As we picture again the wars they wage

Deep strains are touched from our own heart-strings:

Recorded virtue and valour assuage

The pain that a peaceable era brings

When, thrive as we may, the thrones and rings                               

Are gone, with the Guardians, the spears and the embossed

Elven-shields: word-wielders, we shape these things

In song that abides though battle be lost.

 

And lost, or so it appeared, was the Lord

Of the South – outnumbered his knights, the flower

Of the Southern Realm – when a Saviour restored

The odds of their battle at the bitterest hour.

The darkest, most dangerous land he explored

With purity of purpose, no other power,

To get rid of the Sceptre of Sorgrim the Abhorred

And thus to destroy his terrible tower.

But for Fortinbras, what followed was sour –

Unreal cure, unrecognised cost –

And though he and his helpers did save and scour

The Demesne, their home, all his happiness was lost.

 

And lost, long lost, as the legends agree,

Are the earlier kingdoms of this fair Earth,

The evergreen realms where the Elves lived free

In highland and forest, by river and firth,

Until Eastern Midyard was sunk in the sea

After Sorgrim had quelled its music and its mirth.

Then the isle was given by the Gods’ decree,

The marvellous gift of matchless worth

For the bravest Men, where was brought to birth

A sea-going nation that cruised and crossed

On the glittering seas, to the globe’s vast girth:

Yet Atalantis also was lost,

 

Lost when the maddest and mightiest king,

Seduced by Sorgrim, set sail for the West,

Driven by dread, and attempting to cling

On to life by invading the Land of the Blessed.

The ban he would flout, his fleet he would fling

Recklessly and unto himself would wrest

The mountain-valleys, the meadows of Spring

And the green brightness of Yavanna’s breast.

When the vessels of violent mortals pressed

On that shining shore, they were shaken, tossed

And overwhelmed by the Wave with crest

Of terror. The Isle down-tilted and was lost.

 

Altogether lost since then, say they

Who venture in vessels, is Pellanor:

Green waves and woven winds betray

All ships that would shelter on that shore.

But still the sea-path runs, we say:

The Lost Straight Road of Elven-lore.

Now, noble warriors, listen to my lay,

And each lovely lady and lord’s paramour,

As I sing you the history, hidden before

In speech unwritten and spells unglossed,

Of that wonderful craft in the dragon-war

Which reconstituted the King you had lost.

  

For lest it be lost I learned it myself

From the mouth of the Maid of the Motherhood,

The witch Calendis, who worked for the welfare

Of birds in the City and beasts in the wood.

In full she told it me, Findir the Elf:

The Flight of the Goddess, Yavanna the Good.

From the farther shore to the ocean shelf

She came to befriend us as best she could,

And to wield her weapons as well she should,

Her fresh green spears for our snow and frost;

And at last restored, be it understood,

To the Gods, what they never knew they had lost. 

 

         

Lost in the mist were the twinkling lights

Of Mithlond’s tower and wave-washed wall.

All night, and for nine more days and nights

The ship fared forward through rise and fall

Of waves with dark-green depths and heights

Of white foam weltering: wind and squall

And storm-cloud stayed her never: flights

Of white birds, wide-winged, gladdened all

On board, till the curve of the cloud-wrapped ball

Was touched by the dawn of a timeless day

And the years of yearning and sad recall

With the murmuring waves and mist fell away.

 

For the way of the ship overshoots the curve

As the Helmsman steers and holds to the Road

With helm unswivelling: never a swerve

Disturbs the magically peaceful mode

Of her silent passage; the high airs serve

To bear her towards the blest abode

And to cleanse the breath, and to calm each nerve,

Until Fortinbras hopes that his heavy load,

With the tears of his torment that ought to have flowed,

By some mercy and means of Pellanor, may

Be loosed indeed, no longer owed,

Wept out, all wept and all wiped away.

 

Not long now, the way, what is left of the line

To be drawn by the keel through the cool blue air.

The waves of the air-surge whisper and whine

And a second Ocean lies open there

Under glorious stars that glitter and shine

On the Evening’s bosom spread broad and bare;

And faint sweet singing is heard, for a sign.

Then rain sweeps down like rippling hair

Through a long grey night of near-despair

Till, as tresses are tied back, torrent and spray,

Falling behind in the wake, gleam where

The rising sun makes a red-gold way.

 

And the clouds roll away, for the winds are swift,

Bringing a fragrance from the land

That lies ahead, where the last waves lift

And fall in lines on the silver sand.

Bright castles of coral waver and shift

In the brilliant brine. Now boats that are manned

By minstrels set forth, making melodies drift

And fade, and then strengthen along the strand

To a song like the swell of a sea-organ grand

As the ship of the Exiles enters the bay.

Now the arch of the haven is near at hand,

And ropes are cast, and the wooden way

 

Is down. The way through the harbour is wide

And paved with pearl, and pillared and chained

With sea-green bronze; and soon here stride

The firstborn folk who of old remained

Within Midyard’s boundaries, now to abide

In freedom from strife, in joy unconstrained.

But Fortinbras stops, with old Staffal his guide,

To draw breath of delight, unforced, unfeigned,

On sight of the swan-white city, unstained

Metimalonde. We leave them to stay

There in peace: we follow those deep-pained

With more-piercing delight as they wend their way.

 

         

Away to the West, once the mountains are passed,

A dome and a distant Mound in bloom

Are beheld with heart-springing tears at last,

Like gleaming floods after winter’s gloom.

Now Quendil’s folk go galloping fast

Through shimmering mead and shadowy combe

To Pelmar the verdant city, the vast

Gold gate of the Gods, and the House of Doom.

Alas, for this homing I’ve neither room

Nor words to attempt to tell of the scene –

The welcome that Serna now weaves on her loom,

Of Quendil the Elf-lord and Aglariel the Queen.

 

Then, a queen no longer, but quiet in mood

She wanders the meads, unclad, like a maid

Amid flowers in myriads, many-hued,

Where gaily, aforetime, she gadded and played,

Till her health is young, and her heart renewed;

Then, blossom-crowned, barefoot ’mid bells of the glade,

She wends to Pelmar, for thither she’s wooed

By doves and finches and fawns unafraid.

And merrily sought, and with mirth waylaid,

She is found by the Fair-elves, brought home to the green

City, embowered and bathed and arrayed

For an interview with Vanna the Queen.

 

This Queen is a Goddess, the Giver of Fruits

On heavy bough, in fragrant heap,

And bringer-forth of the young of the brutes

From the flames of love that within them leap.

Her power, arising in rugged roots

From unknown waters and wellsprings deep,

Is shown in the buds and the shining shoots,

The ripening grape and the gift Men reap,

And their harvest-home, and the feasts we keep:

Hail Yavanna, heroine

Of this age of war and desert: we weep

For joy, when thus festally joined by our Queen!

 

Quickly to the Queen comes Aglariel

And mounts to the throne on the Sacred Mound

Where the stocks of the Trees still stand and dwell

Though of old their branches were withered and browned

By the hateful Spy and the Spider of hell.

The Lady curtseys low to the crowned

Goddess, who graciously greets her. ‘Tell

Me,’ she says, ‘whom rumours and fears confound,

The tale of the herbs that grow in the ground,

All the lore of the regions where long you have been

And those wildernesses where wolves abound.

I request full word, being also their Queen.’ 

 

       

The Queen listens while the Lady speaks

Of Midyard’s wasting and wounding and woe

And the blood of the Goddess blooms in her cheeks

And ever her grief and anger grow

And her anger searches and her sorrow seeks

For counsel: how some help might go

Beyond the sheer blue-shining peaks

Of the mountain-borderland barred with snow,

To the long-abandoned Earth below,

Where Elves have dwindled, but Dwarves are strong,

And a wicked Wizard has leagued with the foe,

And Men are too blind to know right from wrong.

 

But the wrong that rankles most in her mind,

The ulcer-like fact and ugly offence

That might be matter for mirth unkind,

Is the fate of her eldest people, the Ents:

The wise old giants, the wardens assigned

To the broad-leaved woods, the brakes and the dense

Thickets, domain of the hart and hind,

Most needing, most worthy of care. Whence,

Then, came it, against all common-sense,

All wisdom and law that to life belong,

That mad mistake, that folly intense –

Race-wide separation? How wrong,

 

How woefully wrong those wise ones were,

The Ent and the Entwife, to end their troth,

Undoing the bond betwixt Him and Her

And living apart in loin-bound sloth;

How foolishly, fatally wrong to defer

All procreation: they proving so loth

And lazy, how could not that Loss but occur –

The absurd mislaying, at last, of both

By the other? And now that the greenwood’s growth

Is threatened by axe-wielding Dwarves in throng,

The Goddess feels like some girl to whom oath

Has been pledged by a lover of play and wrong.

 

      

Well, the wrong must be mended. The Goddess arises

And gives the Lady her leave to go,

And the Lady goes, and the look in her eyes is

A gleam of compassion, a pitying glow.

And the last on the list of our goodbyes is

Now to be said: we cannot know

Her goals hereafter and elven-guises:

Lady Aglariel, farewell – but lo,

Your leaven’s at work in the lump of dough,

A purpose rising though your part is done,

A faith new-forming in embryo;

And now is my narrative truly begun.

 

For the Goddess has begun to desire to go

Herself to the Earth, as she erstwhile went,

To walk in those woods where the blossoms blow

And the leaves decay with a lingering scent.

But for now, with steady steps, although

Fierce thistle and thorn spring up and prevent

Much speed, with the spikes of the purple sloe,

She moves to a mountain-side where, blent

With smithy-smoke, red sparks are spent

In the snow; and her brambles writhe and run

Through passage and chamber and arch, to the pent,

The shop of Auland. She has begun

 

        

To speak, begun to assail her Spouse

With words, before he has risen from his work,

From his anvil-blows and blast, with brows

Blackened and bent in a questioning quirk;

And his sparks fly among her spiky boughs

And the thorns of her thought catch fire in his mirk.

‘Lord Auland,’ she cries, ‘Arise and rouse

Thyself  to thy duty, nor longer lurk

In smoky labour; ’tis shame to shirk

Thine intervening when the Earth grows ill,

Which thy merciless Dwarves, and Men berserk,

Are wounding with thine own too-well-taught skill!’

 

      

‘This skill,’ he replies, ‘for the which thou scoldest,

They have learned indeed of me, who am Lord

Of all moulds and all matter, the chief and oldest

Of metal-makers and miners. To unhoard

The Almighty’s bounty I deem the boldest

Of worshipful acts, of works that accord

With His compassion: yea, here thou beholdest

The spade, the axe, the scythe and the sword,

My fruits indeed, such as friendship may afford

To humble Children whose chances are ill

In a world in which thy thought is ignored

Not by me, but by Sorgrim’s murderous will.

 

‘For his will continueth, working alone

Like a mole or a worm in the minds of men,

Though he himself be thrust from his throne

And yarded in darkness beyond our ken;

And at whiles that hidden will is shown

When the parasite creepeth out of its pen

To gnaw the brain, the bowel, the bone

And to inflame both the grief and the greed once again.

Blame not the weapons, O Lady, when

The axemen cut and the bowmen kill

And wound thy forest and waste thy fen;

Nay, pity the Men, thus maimed in will.’

 

      

‘I will not pity them,’ and she pauses,

‘Until the tale of their pitiless crime

Against my loved ones and my laws is

Ended, or else, until such time

As the Ents’ Divorce, whatever its causes,

Be healed: for this I hold the prime

Betrayal. And since no citing of clauses,

No wordsmith’s wile, no lawyer’s lime,

No cooking of blame with reason and rhyme

Will save the wilds that will soon be attacked

Though the beavers build and the bears still climb,

It surely is needful now to act!’

 

‘What act of ours,’ he angrily asks,

With fires arising and furnace roaring,

‘Can touch them from here? O Vanna, some tasks

No extent of need, no tearful imploring

Can rouse to knighthood: their noble masks

Of pity, of passion, of wrath’s outpouring,

Are covers for dust, mere empty casques!

Thy wish, as I guess, is to go a-warring

In Midyard’s realms once more, restoring

Thy folk by the force of our arms, but the fact

Is this, what thou art so strangely ignoring:

Added to our law is a Limiting Act.

 

‘Enacted thereby are the bounds that we

Must keep, and humankind endure

Lest, though their dreaming be drowned in the sea,

Our shimmering shore once more allure

Them hither; nor shall such Hatred be,

No second Sorgrim of malice pure,

No strife beyond strength, as might make plea

Once more, and move us to aid them. Newer

Commandment biddeth thee bide as a viewer

While frailest children, whose freedom is racked

With pain and weakness, work their own cure

And forge their adulthood, act by act.

 

        

‘And I would act with an iron hand,

Would eagerly punish, with equal wrath,

The stoning and smiting my Dwarves withstand

And the lethal fires that lay them in swath,

Nor stew the blame with reasonings bland

But sup on darker, saltier broth –

Vengeance on vicious men, dragons, orcs and

Elves – if such wishes weren’t mere froth!

Shall we fret against Mindir’s law, like a moth

Fretting his garment? Or shall we gird

Ourselves as rivals, rebels in cloth

Of steel? Nay, nay. My story thou hast heard:

 

‘How once I heard the voice of the All-Highest

That spake reproof on my younger pride

And reckless rivalship, rashest and wryest

Of moods, when I made my folk and defied

His order, as thou now also defiest

Him in thy heart, maybe? Cried

I for mercy, ashamed, and since, have been shyest

Of going against His law. To provide

For their help and luck, be it His, enskied

As ultimate Monarch, with Mindir preferred

As His lieutenant. The world is wide

But Mindir seëth, all sorrow is heard –’

 

‘Thou hast not heard a word I have said.’

Thus brashly breaking into his speech

And turning away with a toss of her head,

She leaves him to glower and be glum, in breach

Of wedlock banned from her bosom and bed.

Then planting herself in the plain, like a beech

With crown of copper and crimson-red,

She lets her longing and sadness reach

Upward in her leaves, her bitterness leach

Downward through her roots, till a beautiful bird

Ascends from her crown, with a cry to beseech

High Heaven. Her prayer, no doubt, is heard;

 

But no voice is heard, no vigorous tone

As when in former time the tongue

Of the Loftiest questioned Auland alone

In secret cell, deep-mined, among

The new-made Dwarves... And time unknown

Elapses, while bindweed-bells are strung

And grasshoppers chirp, and chafers drone

In whirring flight, with wings outflung;

And the bee laments, and the psalm is sung

On the bough. Can it be that her heart has erred?

Are those yearning leaves, no longer young,

Thus restlessly sighing and rustling unheard?

 

      

We have heard of the House of Doom, the Halls

Of Marbaug the mighty Jailer and Judge,

Where the ages pass in funeral palls,

The seconds traipse and the centuries trudge.

For the pitiful ghosts in their sheets and shawls

His doom is a bar that no pleading can budge;

He fastens the guilt for each blow that falls

And traces the ground of each feud and grudge.

Hither Yavanna hies, through sludge

And marshy slime, with measured tread,

To the one who assuredly will not fudge

On the doom of the Earth, the Lord of the Dead.

 

The courts of the Dead have a dark way in

With ponderous door-valves, wide apart,

But the gap, to the Goddess, seems low and thin

As she crosses the threshold with a throbbing heart.

Down dusky aisles, her eyes begin

To descry vast screens and hangings, the art

Of Serna the Weaver, whose work is to spin

The warp of the tapestry of time, and to chart

Each birth, kingdom, battlefield, engine and cart

In wool and wire on the dull black thread.

At length a step makes Yavanna start:

Behind her looms the Lord of the Dead.

 

From a dead-white countenance, ’neath the cowl

Of a dull black robe, queer rays emerge:

His eyes, vividly violet, scowl

And burn, as they glance on skin, like a scourge.

He smells of the tomb; his feet are foul,

His vesture ragged, and rusty his verge;

And he bows, but speaks reproof: ‘This prowl

Is imprudent, O Queen.’ Then in deeper, more dirge-

Like tones: ‘What wouldst thou terminate? Purge

Thy womanhood, wouldst thou – be sterile instead

Of fruit-giving Soil? What frenzy might urge

The Lady of Life to encroach on the Dead?’

 

‘Almost dead, though it dimly burneth,

Is hope in my heart,’ she responds, ‘and ’tis fitting

That doubt be determined. Darkness returneth,

Ugly and murderous, unremitting,

In Midyard now, where Mankind spurneth

Restraint on greed, of my ways unwitting.

O Seer and Sentencer, whose sight discerneth

The wards of the future, say: When will the pitting

And burning be ended, the hacking and hitting

Restrained? Will they learn this, or will they be led

To go on shamefully abusing, beshitting

And harming the land till it lieth dead?’

 

Slowly, with deadly assurance, he shakes

His head, thus thoroughly quenching hope;

And his eyebeam, waxing merciless, makes

Her blench, half-blinded, turn and grope

For the exit. Cries of choughs and crakes

Mock her march on the muddy slope

Down into night. When a new dawn breaks

In skirts of amber and scarlet cope –

Vestments that vanish as cloud-veils ope

On the light of a limb ungarmented –

She stands on a sea-cliff, too stubborn to mope,

Like a splintered pine you’d suppose quite dead.

 

      

With deadened eyes she watches the waves,

Dim lines of blue, almost lost to sight

In the azure gulf; and the gunlike caves

At the water’s edge, exploding white,

Can hardly be heard. But what liquid laves

Her bark – what balm is this? The light

Of the lengthening sun-track so behaves

That the breadth of the bay now glitters bright;

What inkling is it, can thus excite

Her sap, be-needling her senses numb?

And now a great wave mounts, with might

And comb of majesty. She watches it come.

 

Now comes to the surface a wading wight

Who shoves up this wave with his shoulders and chest

Till it crashes and surges and seethes to her height

And shiningly showers her, as if in jest,

And then forms a tall mist, foamy and slight,

Whose hangings dissolve at the wind’s behest

To reveal his dark divinity, dight

With a dazzling crown like a silver crest

And virid gems on kirtle and vest.

And the voice of the God of the Sea is like some

Unasked-for gift, some answer unguessed:

‘Hail Yavanna! Why hast thou come?’

 

Her tears are coming, her cones are dripping

With resinous fuel and glistening fire;

And he gravely stands his ground, unslipping

’Mid fury of surf and the sudden ire

Of the deep. By degrees, her grievance gripping,

She ceases sobbing and speaks him: ‘Sire,

Fain would I leave this land, but shipping

There’s none: fain would I help them, but higher

Or further than Mindir I falter, in mire

Of apostasy stumbled and steeped in scum!

Yet what good? Since Marbaug’s meaning is dire

And doom he foreseëth must certainly come.’

 

‘Come come, take comfort,’ he makes reply:

‘The walls of doom (as thy doubt bewrayeth)

Are breached; and captive spirits may spy

The chink, or a link in the chain, that allayeth

Their suffering. So shall it be while I

Endure, a secret voice that gainsayeth,

A light in the depths, who dare defy

That law and fate which the land obeyeth,

For this my appointed part. Who prayeth

From depth of spirit, where truth be not dumb,

May move my pity: ’tis my hand, swayeth

The deep: it shall carry thee downward. Come!’

 

His fingers come, fearsomely big,

With weed-grown knuckles and rust-coloured nails,

Around her bole, and each bough, and each twig,

And like a wave they uplift her. She wails

In her rapture: bereft, her rootlets dig

The sand, as he sets her down, and exhales.

And now, behold! In herald’s rig,

Escutcheon and mirroring armour, one scales

The steep and stands in the light, which assails

Her damaged sense. Indifferent, mum,

She muses while Mindir’s messenger hails

With a trumpet-call, and the admonishments come:

 

‘What will become of thee, Goddess unwary?

How wilt thou plan, how attend to thy plot?

By means chaotic, with method contrary,

Will it not run to decay and rot?

The plans of the Viceroy do not vary:

His thought is clear, without cloud or clot:

But thou, in thy mist of mind and vagary,

Shalt learn that light of thine own thou hast not.

Thy truth is blackness, a formless blot,

A slough of passion, a fertile slum:

Then go not forth! The form thou hast got

Would, yonder, be forfeit: as Chaos thou shouldst come.’

 

      

The third that comes, while she struggles to think,

Comes riding the water, a thing like a whale

Abreast of the breakers, the dangerous brink,

But leaving a slick, a long calm trail.

All mottled and stained, as with mauve-brown ink,

Are its lithe torso and oily tail,

And now can be spied the round spire, all pink

And mother-of-pearly, glimmering pale.

In glides the enormous glass-shelled snail

And the Sea-god says: ‘Thou shalt not lack

A vessel, Lady: his strength will avail

For an earthward voyage. Let him bear thee back.’

 

Turning her back on the Herald, she touches

A helping hand, not much higher than hers –

The Sea-god, Holmo’s size being such as

His mood, as the moment demands, avers.

She cries in the shimmering shallows, clutches

His arm as he guides her going, demurs

’Mid the ridges and mounds of sea-weed, as much as

If it bore the bitterest spikes and burrs.

The snail Ingolmo snuffles and stirs

And the skirt of his lip goes slimy and slack

And his horns thrust high, as the passengers

Approach and rise to embark on his back.

 

With a sad look back, now sundered from home,

She seats herself on the curving bench

That winds in and up through the whorls of the dome,

The clear and the pearly that tighten and clench.

And now Ingolmo is footing the foam

And her window is washed as the billows drench,

And he holds the slope, through the coral-comb

And the deepening green, and does not blench

Until he comes to the terrible trench,

The border-abyss, without beam or track,

Between the worlds... And she feels like a wench,

A virgin-lover now laid on her back.

 

Backwards and forwards, unfathomably weltering,

Swimming writhingly, rolling and sprawling,

Slipping and sliding and helter-skeltering,

Down through intimate darkness falling,

Spiralling inward, sweating, sweltering,

Melting, merging, moaning and bawling:

Deep in the shell more quietly sheltering,

Feeling the threatened Forfeiture crawling

Over her limbs like lichen, galling

And swelling in tumours and turning black:

Travelling onward, heaving and hauling

The ark of the Damned on the deep way back.

 

Back at last, at the opposite ledge,

On a solid surface, the wall of the crags,

The marches of Midyard, thus the edge

Of Time and Entropy, riches and rags,

Through weed-portcullis and hanging hedge,

Surmounting vicious vertical snags,

The clinging snail then climbed. What pledge,

What ribboned oyster-shell, tied with tags,

Did she hurriedly hide in mysterious bags?

What pain was Holmo’s, watching her pack

And rummage and grope, the grimmest of hags,

With bent body and bulging back?

 

Taken aback by the terrible change

Now plain to be seen in the sea-green light,

The Sea-lord sombrely looked at her strange

Dark lips, from doglike teeth pulled tight;

Her soil-black skin, part scabbed with mange,

Part tumid and blistered with leprous blight;

Her hair grey as roots, and as hard to arrange,

Over eyes that gazed in the Gods’ despite:

A demoness-like darkness, a fright,

Invested with many a vile black sack,

Lo! Chaos she sat, in accursed plight,

Self-tangled beyond all turning back.

 

Glimpsing her back, Men gloomily curse

The cheapskate, chance, and the trash of Weird:

But we discern her as nature’s Nurse

And many-wombed Mother, in darkness revered.

Yavanna, the high-elven name I rehearse

Befits not thy new form: the endeared

Name YABETH henceforward be used in this verse

To thy honour. So onward they steadily steered

While a crowd of spirits and creatures appeared

O’er the glimmering downlands of dulse and wrack,

And romped and rollicked and plunged and reared

To welcome the Lord of Waters back. 

 

      

When the way back is the best way forward:

When the star of ambition, by which you steered,

Guides but more barrenly, bitterly Norward:

When the Western voyage, that you chartered and cheered,

Has ended in wreckage and rowing shoreward:

When the rind of the World is all wrinkly and seared,

And the seeds of hope lie hidden, coreward:

Then the gate of the Navel should not be feared,

Nor that backward path up which you have peered,

In your personal life and your public too!

Though the eyes of Yabeth are bloody and bleared,

She sees, in that vileness, a something new.

 

The Moon was new, the Sun having set

Amid murky masses and splotches of cloud

On a beryl-green backdrop, starless as yet:

Yellow he gleamed there, glad and proud.

Rain had finished; the wind was wet;

The reeds of the shoreline shivered and bowed,

And birds were hidden and hushed, while the fret

Of the little, lapping waves was loud.

Inland, the craggy hills, like a crowd

With fissured faces falling askew –

Shaly, shadowy, shaggy-browed –

Stood watching, waiting for something new.

 

For nothing new had arrived on this shore –

The Neraegrast, as it now is known –

Since the Island suddenly sank to the floor

Of the sea, and through, causing waves to be thrown

With tumult, tempest-onslaught that tore

At massive rocks, and laid mountains prone,

And clove the unclimbable cliffs of yore

To open this gulf with a fiord of its own

Whose water lay like luminous stone

In the twilight, until a turbulence grew

Into spreading circles, preceding the Crone

Who came with burden and baggage of the new.

 

Renewed, reaffirmed and feeling better,

She set her foot in the soiling clay

And squelched forward, released from the fetter

Of self-mistrust; and her track, next day,

A wandering zigzag through firmer and wetter

Ground, and up through the broken grey

Of the cold hill’s side, resembled a letter,

A sudden-blossoming signal, an A

In pinks and lavenders, gorgeous and gay,

With mallows blooming and sea-stars blue;

Which Holmo read, in the Sun’s bright ray,

As notice and sign of her starting anew.

 

‘Harvest new,’ he declared, ‘is at hand,

The Sky and the scathéd Earth between:

Jar and jagging, unpleasant, unplanned,

Will shake the germen and shock the gene

And bring forth mutants, a monstrous band;

Yet these will serve us well, I ween,

And defend her glade, where the quickening gland

Will shoot with tawniest, shiniest green

And the springs of passion run pure and clean.

Now loyalty serfish and deep is due

To Yabeth, since yesterday made your queen:

Yea, Earth and Sea have made nuptials new.’

 

Fabulous news for the Sea-lord’s folk!

The merry dolphin, the merman and maid,

With those sportive creatures of whom I spoke,

The crab, the kraken with spines displayed,

The sexy selkie in sealskin cloak,

The nix and the naiad of fresh cascade –

Dispersed with many a jest and joke,

Yet resolving, loyal to the Lord they obeyed,

To give his Partner all possible aid.

But the valiant vassal and vessel drew

His weary stretched-out horns in, and strayed

In the rich kelp-pasture, his powers to renew.

 

      

Newly, gravely, tenderly greeted,

The awakened woods, the astonished hills,

The very Earth, so viciously treated,

Throbbed and quivered and quickened with thrills.

Dewdrops twinkled, nestlings tweeted

And jubilant skylarks scattered their trills

While, seeking a place where she might be seated,

Beyond the gulleys and wooded ghylls,

And the rising ridge, and the rocky sills,

She lavishly strewed on the land forlorn

Fresh roses, new grasses and clear bright rills

In her progress. Thence, to the precipice-thorn,

 

The writhen thorn on the ruggedest beak

Of rock, she fared; and it foamed into bloom

As, blinking, she gazed at the granite bleak

And the waterfall’s wavering downward plume

On the nearing wall of the narrowing creek,

The head of the Bay of Undor. The boom

Of churning billows she heard, and her cheek

Was chilled and spattered with flying spume.

Here would she house and herself inhume,

Yes, hide from Heaven and the Herald’s scorn;

And hence, from the heavy kernel and womb,

Put forth her fierceness in fang and in thorn.

 

For the thorns descended in thickening clumps

To the edge of Erynvorn, the immense

Forest that lay like silk on the lumps

Of the legs of rock, with ladders and rents.

Steep gorges and hollows below the humps

She then perceived, and soon to her sense

Appeared the Entwives like frightened frumps,

Themselves aware of her, waiting in suspense

In their fallow bowers and falling tents.

There, in the vaults of the Erynvorn,

’Mid caves and chasms and deep sea-vents,

Would she find some grotto and grow out her thorn.

 

Thorniest brambles lunged and leaped,

Sought for, seized and savagely whipped

The woeful Entwives. Warm wind swept

Through the branchy coverings, broke them and stripped,

And thistledown flew, and thunderclouds crept

On darkening bellies that bulged and dripped.

All animals crouched: none cried, none slept.

Lightning wrathfully stabbed and ripped,

Blasting and rending the roof of her crypt

Till the niche was riven, the nucleus torn

And the delicate double coil unzipped

For fusion of lion, ant, lizard and thorn,

 

So that thorny beetles and thorn-tailed bugs

Came buzzing and zooming and zanily bumbling:

Slimily slithering, yard-long slugs

And venomous toad-things hopping and tumbling.

Strong lianas like strangling thugs

With giant poppies and thorn-apples jumbling

Would offer a vintage of dreadful drugs.

Then tyrant-lizards came towering and stumbling,

Reptile warriors snarling and rumbling,

And long-beaked gliders, on bat-wings borne

Up out of the mouth of her cave, where the mumbling

One probed still further through fingers of thorn,

 

      

Thumbs of thorn and a thousand sharp-

Thorned wrists: a roller of red-barbed wire,

A wavelike hedge came, wide as the scarp

Of a swiftly swelling Mound... Admire

The whole of her magic, nor morally carp

At chaos and contrast, the rose and the briar;

Let the harshest horn and the merriest harp

Be loud in her homage, with hautboy and lyre;

Let the flawless flower of the bramble aspire

With the bloody prickle, the proud tormentor,

To blackness and sweetness, the bliss all desire,

The fruit that ripens as we reach the centre.

 

Out from the centre, from the serried loops

Of the hedge that had run, then slowed to a halt,

The militant Earth-mother urged her troops

And thrust them through it, to begin the revolt

With huge advances and horrible swoops.

Had now her feelings, so fierce, so at fault,

Been leashed with grammar and words in groups,

She thus would have spoken: ‘Speed now, bolt

To the dwellings of Men and Dwarves: assault

Their smithies and smite each mad inventor,

Each metal-minded masculine dolt –

Yea, smite them and smash them! And then, to the centre,

 

‘My centre of tasty reward, return.’

And so, as she wished, they wildly began;

But in no way might those legions learn

To wage war wisely, according to plan,

Nor even, though sturdy in battle and stern,

To recognise friend or foe as they ran!

A mellay of monsters ensued, like a quern,

A violent milling ’twixt rearguard and van

That ground out nothing but carnage. Can

You imagine, yourselves, those scenes, that sent a

Re-echoing noise from the end of the span

To the compass-point now piercing her centre?

 

Centrally gored by a goad of despair –

The thought of that Herald being really right

In his foul prediction, and Holmo’s fair

Being merely fond – with all the more might

Did she impatiently will and impel from each lair

Those few of her creatures still fit to fight.

Over the moorlands they scoured, to scare

The deer and kine, to catch and bite

Or clumsily claw with ferocious delight

The livestock of Men, and at last to enter

The square of the terrified town, where the sight

They sought for glared and flamed at the centre.

 

      

Centres of order and organisation,

Forges of cruelty, crime and creed,

Worms of counsel and complication,

Brightest brains are a dragonish breed.

Finding courage in co-operation

And nastier weapons to fit their need,

The Men then massacred the monstrous nation

By flinging tar with a flaming glede,

Pitch-black liquid that lit with all speed

And wrapped the invaders in red-orange dress...

Ah, fiendish cunning, fiery indeed,

And the cause of Yabeth lost, unless

 

Some counsellor, less naïve, should come

To furnish the wit and the wiles she lacked.

So there she was, all wizened and glum.

But a crepitant sounds, as of seed-pods cracked,

A distant rustle that rose to a hum,

Gave note of the legions that next would impact

And do great damage, a maximum,

To the fold, the field and the fertile tract.

Down they came in a cataract,

In glittering swarms, as if glad to express

Her anger... Such plagues and displeasures, in fact,

Would thenceforth afflict you but little less.

 

Nevertheless, her full wide lap

And bosom in ageless figure-of-eight

Had also their yearning, like yeast or sap

Or an itch in the loam of her country. ‘Late

In the season,’ she said to herself, ‘mayhap

I still shall help them to higher estate:

Stouten them, raise them and re-enwrap

Them in coals of green at the carbon-gate.’

So mightiest verdure, with marvellous weight

Of blossom and apple and berry, did bless

Her trees, and make, for tribes that would migrate,

Her realm a refuge where love should be less

 

      

Unproductive. The lesser and lowlier came

To this fold and forested groin, to embase

Themselves quite simply, without any shame:

The Woses, the wild aboriginal race,

Whose clans now throve; and Men, who would claim

A share of her bounty, and boldly efface,

Through bloody penance, their share of the blame,

And further, through filthiest ritual, embrace

Her luxuriant darkness. At a dawdling pace

The troubled Ents came, the Elves as well,

And among the latter that lady of grace

Whom we anciently knew as Nendorel.

 

This Nendorel is that same who never

Returned to her lover Dimorn, but tarried

All summer long, till the year did sever

Them finally, falling in tempest that carried

His vessel and him from harbour. Forever

Remorseful, unshriven (though immortal), unmarried,

She wandered away to the South, where a clever

Magician walked in the wastes of the Arid

Mountains, helping and healing those harried

By hideous Orcs. With him she would dwell

And learn how memory’s lunge might be parried

And named as the Conscience of Nendorel.

 

      

Nendorel learned his craft, the unlacing

Of mind, the massaging and moulding of mood,

And the making of dreams...until chariots, chasing

The soldiers of Kedral, themselves were pursued

By the sense of an Age, a new richness racing

And budding in redness of branch and brood.

Trusting the influence, slowly retracing

Her journey, she joined the Crone whose crude

Impolicy cried for some craft and shrewd

Advice. ‘Thou needest a Knight to fulfil

Thy desire, one with warrior’s wisdom endued:

Engage, O Goddess, with masculine skill!’

 

      

With skilful sayings that soothed the ear

Of the stubborn Goddess, she instilled this theme;

Meanwhile becoming, as she walked by the mere

Of the forest, or followed its inflowing stream

Northward, well known to the villages near

As a cunning healer. And she came to seem

To the farther towns, still possessed by fear

Of the woods, a double witch: they would dream

Of the dark Fuindis; Calendis they’d deem

A diamond of goodness with flickering flaws.

But she herself still searched for a dream,

A forecast figure, a man for the cause.

 

Cause and effect, like the carded fleece

Spun out to the spool of a spinning-wheel,

Unwound their yarn through the years of peace

To the Dragon’s coming and the dreadful deal

He made with the Men of the North. No release

From that bond might there be, unless some leal

Adventurer, scouring the verdigris

From helm and hauberk, the rust from old steel,

Should answer in shining armour the appeal

Of a kingdom scorched by the scathing jaws;

‘But a thane,’ she thought, ‘of such zest and zeal

Should be fighting also in the feminine cause.’

 

      

Now, because the yarn has become entwined

With story you know already, I need

Not lengthily tell how she at last divined

A certain red-haired churl as the seed

Of royalty; and picked him. Within rough rind

She sensed the savour, like honey or mead,

Of a singular aptness in manhood and mind

For the hard service of Yabeth. But heed

The summons and warning he would not, read

Political weather he could not, care

About danger he did not – till captured, to bleed

In the clutch of the Dragon, in dreary despair.

 

The despairing comrade who saw him killed

By those talons, lopped to a limbless hunk

And gelded in sport while his life-blood spilled,

Then kept the faith: with a feeble spunk

He picked up the pieces, all slimy and chilled –

Head, limbs, cock and balls, burst bowels and trunk –

And, lacking both time and tools to build

Any sepulchre, found a small boat, half-sunk

In stained black mud that gurgled and stunk,

Yet somehow unrotted and sound: it would bear

The body to deep sea-burial. Drunk

Were the whole cups now, of human despair

 

And chthonic despair: for the Sea-folk sought

Those pieces, which sank in the sewage-draught

Of the estuary; and, with effort, brought

Them, enwreathed in weeds, on a wreck-built raft,

All along the wild leagues of the coast, to the distraught

Earth-mother. Immediately, with a daft

Unthinking rawness, she freshly wrought

Each fragment back in the frame – yet, graft

And mend as she might, with magnificent craft,

The Soul was gone. It now sojourned where

(As she saw in her mind) the Lord Marbaug laughed

With an ugly smirk at her utter despair.

 

      

Despairing, dispirited, heavy and weak,

She fondled the hair of her champion: healed

And alive, he lingered in coma. His cheek

And chin felt wet, all at once: the unceiled

Roof-strata, it seemed, had a strange new leak

That dripped in puddle and pool, and revealed

At length, by the sliding kiss of a sleek

Low wave, her Partner – who presently appealed

To her thus: ‘Poor Yabeth, wilt thou not yield

To the prayer of the Gods, and the Elves aghast,

And the Land itself, thy lush green field

That hath wanned and withered, since from it thou passed?

 

‘For since thou passed, who wert part of them,

Is their stature not less? For they lack what is thine.

Diminished they walk, yea, and hold up the hem,

Lest it trouble and trip them, of raiment divine!

Each animal, gentle or fierce, like a gem

That loseth its lustre, doth languish and pine;

And thy grasses, do they not grieve on the stem,

Thy grapes grow shrivelled, thy shrubs decline?

And so I am sent, for they all combine,

Save one, in bidding me beg thee to recast

Thy loyalty: O Lady, return, and the wine

Of the joy of thy peers will be unsurpassed.’

 

A moment passed, while she brooded and muttered,

Re-energized by his love; but the lice

That rustled her scalp, with cockroaches that scuttered,

Seemed now to scoff at and scout the advice,

And queerly to scorn the request he had uttered.

(And hadn’t he known she’d be hard to entice?)

Yet, clear as a coin in a purse uncluttered,

Her sense of a possible sacrifice,

A private sorrow, an ultimate price,

Was like the last gold of a gambler outclassed

By some diabolical cheat. New dice

To avenge the loadedly logical past!

 

‘This errand-pastime and embassy-quiz,’

Quoth she, in a whispery wheeze, through a throat

Half-filled with dust, ‘all the Deities

Have authorised, all save one, I note:

And that one who abstaineth, I wot who he is:

’Tis Fate who foldeth his arms, and doth gloat

While regarding the Soul of my servant as his!

If their Lordships, for leverage gathered, will vote

To prise it from him – this price thou mayst quote,

This the bargain I offer – new-graced, new-grassed

Shall Pellanor be, with a beauty remote

From imagining: its former fashion surpassed

 

      

‘By far. Having passed the unfettered Soul

To me, good Mariner, thou shalt get

In trust, a treasure to ease their dole,

A cargo packed, that will pay my debt,

A parcel of me, that will make them whole.

Now get thee gone, for thy course is set:

Go make that Bastard give back what he stole.’

So, faithful, obliging and full of regret

For the adorable maiden he once had met,

The Lord of Waters went: with a swirl

That licked her body, he left her, and let

Her poke and search for a secret pearl.

 

This pearl, still closed in the enclasping shell,

Was the pledge that Yabeth received, as you

Remember, when she did marry and mell

With him. In the end she laid hand on it, drew

It forth from a feculent bag, and then fell

To clutching it tightly, with tears of rue;

And a dismal period passed. When the swell

Reflooded, there floated, glimmering, through

Her cavern, a silvery casket; she knew

That the subtle Soul of the slumbering churl

Was inside, and so then, payment being due,

She must loosen her grasp and release the pearl.

 

Catching the pearl in its case of shell

And returning with tidal strength, half-striding,

Half-surging through grotto and dark sea-dell,

Her Consort came to that chasm dividing

The worlds, where he swam untiringly and well.

But here the object of her confiding

Grew frightfully heavy, so fraught as to quell

His forward motion, and to force him, gliding

And floundering, horribly downward; while, hiding

Within his bosom, the case, with its curl

Of ribbonlike weed, in a weird betiding,

Was pulsing with colours of mother-of-pearl.

 

And a pearly radiance round him shone,

And flickered and flashed, as he pulled from his pocket

The scintillant burden, and saw thereon

A little bow like the clasp of a locket,

With tags of ribbon. He tugged them. Anon

Uprushing, up, up like an undersea rocket,

From the ooze and the abyssal wharf, into wan

Green light, it shot: with a dazzling shock it

Opened, and rode on the surface. The socket

Held, ball-like, encradled, a beautiful girl,

Now born into time to unclench and unclock it

As perfect present and priceless pearl.

 

Pearl and maiden whom naught will mar,

She uncurls, uncovers her face and smiles

At the brightening morn, like  a more-bright star,

And the waves of Holmo waft her for miles;

Pearl and goddess, exchanged at par

As the Soul’s equivalent, seen by espials

In latest-born, loveliest vision far,

She develops wings, which enfold her at whiles:

Pearl and butterfly, she passes the isles,

And when those wonderful wings unfurl

They delight all senses, all souls she beguiles

With enchantment of odorous purple and pearl.

 

      

In the pearl-paved city, people are hurrying

Havenward, wanting to welcome thither

A flickering fleck that comes flirting, flurrying

And swirling the winds and waves in a swither

Of cloud and sparkling spindrift. Scurrying

Weather- and wave-forms wax and wither

At the edge of those flaring wings, mind-worrying

Patterns, impossible, all of a dither!

Her flight is seen now, her fluttering slither,

And the child of Chaos, ’mid cheers that resound,

Is hailed and hymned as VILVARIEL. Hither

And thither she randomly roves: to confound,

 

Refound, refix all possibility,

All that’s frustrated and awkwardly striving

Of beauty and bounty, is her facility,

Instant. Iridescently arriving

With perfumed power and volatility,

She recreates more richly the hiving

Of bees, the plumage of birds, the agility

Of sure-footed beasts: the barely surviving

Countryside kindles green, now thriving,

Ablaze, abloom and ablush all around

The path of her progress, her dancing and diving.

And now Vilvariel nears the profound

 

Gloom of that foundry and forge, long cold,

Where the Maker sits. A soft bright scattering

Gaily bespangles with sparks of gold

His moulds and hammer that haven’t been mattering.

Awestruck, but suddenly happy to behold

This child, and to hear her musical chattering,

Auland resumes his work. The wold

And the bronzéd heath, as with brilliant spattering

Of paint, reflower at her passing. Pattering

Gently now on that frontage which frowned

Once before on the boldness of Yabeth, no, battering,

Unshuttering, shattering darkness profound,

 

Vilvariel founds, with force irrefutable,

Logical charm and luminosity,

A mode of being, mixing the mutable

In with the issueless cold viscosity

Of time in those halls. The screens of the inscrutable

Tapestries glint, as her gleaming velocity

Effects new shifting and play in the shootable

Weft; with wonder and curiosity,

Timid ghosts in the tenebrosity

Peep and peer at those Charts which expound

Their whole past histories, charged with atrocity:

Changingly tinted the fabric is found,

 

Profoundly and gently transfigured. The jet

Of her gold now enlivens the large weak frame

Of Marbaug who lies half-swooning, in sweat

Of rape still-prising, still-present shame.

Surprisingly does she depose, like a pet

For a lonely person, as, tired now and tame,

She alights on his knee, that nothing is yet

In its final form. With Serna his dame

He will house this gayest and holiest flame

As a foster-daughter in darkness gowned;

But soon from the Sacred Mound, comes fame

Of a miracle, mightier and more profound:

 

For the Trees that foundered, that foes did slay,

Those two great stocks of touchwood all dry,

Are sprinkled with droppings of buttery spray,

The golden flux of a butterfly,

And arise in splendidest, greenest array:

Yes, resurrected they riddle the sky.

The genuine Good becomes truly gay.

The ruined stocks, and the roots that die,

Of meanings that literal minds deny,

Reflourish in legends loved and renowned:

May the Spell of that Good be regained thereby,

Through the tale and fantasy we have found. Amen.