Has suffered many a lightning crackle
Many a wind-lashed day and night,
And dry, scorched summer with the sun full bright
There is but one name to reach its tip
That storm-proved name must be 'Hardship.'"
Each sage cast eyes one to another,
And glassy-eyed they saw no further,
Then turned back to the wise-woman
But though her breath hung still, her form was gone.
Canto Third
On his throne of well-smoked oak,
Soliloquised the minstrel soak,
He raised his eye from the gnarlèd table,
"My God!" he slurred, "it's turned into a fable!"
"No fables in here mate," said the barman.
"Sorry," said the wastrel bard,
And fell asleep on his tankard.
Yet though his eyes closed 'gainst the dregs
On the table danced eight drunk legs;
A spider reeled and jittered near
And whispered a canto in the wastrel's ear.
Canto Fourth
In sage days cold the air hangs still;
Sagacity, that heartfelt chill
Is there amongst the fens;
It stalks with hart and hare alike;
It shakes with every lightning strike;
Each fearful step from nature's psych;
It measures by the foot.
The skies hiss cold and hard with rain,
The rattled moon keeps ghostly train;
A half-shade foil to the paling sun,
It marks its course, and Winter's run.
Yet through all the cloudbanks' churning,
There is no sign of season turning,
No warming sunlight on the heath,
No leaves for harts to test their teeth.
In Winter's grasp the hills are fast,
Cold, grey, still as the printer's cast;
In capitals strong, this stark grammarye
Spells sage and bitter one grim reverie:
"Why does the sky the sun forgo?
There's scarcely light to play the polo!"
The sages keened unto the skies,
And the heavens hailed upon their cries;
For far away from cheerless weather,
The distant sun shone on the heather;
Far south in water, mire and moss,
Out over many a slough and fosse
There lit in dulcet springtime's glint
A polo pitch of lustrous tint.
As one the sages took to horse,
And out they rode across the gorse;
They ploughed the sleet-mired ground of snow
Each hoof cleft coarse the ling below.
All through the boiling clouds of night,
Right to the half-froze daytime light
The sages drove their horses forth
Over the ice-wrought iron earth.
They pounded over streams and fens,
Beat hard the roofs of foxes' dens,
O'er tumbled stones of country kirk,
Through lych-gates half lost in the murk.
Never was there so fleet a sprite,
Nor wraith-like wisp of fire-damp light,
No shooting spark upon dark heavens
Nor flitting bat that turns and leavens;
Ne'er did man reck one so swift
As a polo-crazed sage atop the drift.
Eight days their horses champed, foamed, sped,
Their haunches steamed, their eyes ringed red,
'Til on the ninth appeared o'er brow
A troubled mire in morning's glow;
No pitch was this, but black as tar
No meadows green seen from afar.
The pool cast back a spectral light,
Mirror'd hills to seem lush and bright;
Yet here was a hollow of ungodly vapour
Where witchery trees turned sunlight to paper.
Many a thriller was cast to the wind;
A religious polemic announced "We Have Sinned."
Yesterday's news was blown on the breeze
A hundred best-sellers took flight from the trees.
The sages stared out at this vegetable lexis,
This ponderous, eloquent xylogenesis;
They looked at the letters arrayed on the breeze
And scratched their heads, for not one could read.
Downhearted, the lode of their old polo field,
Seemed a magnet to draw to their own homely weald;
Yet just as they hurried their horses to leave,
Out hopped a bull-toad with a ribbeting heave.
As sunlight unravelled over the mire,
The toad opened its mouth and recited a quire
Of elegant verse so stately and true
That the oil-black waters seemed to take on the hue
Of amber and gold in exquisite brocade
Woven with agate and with chrysoprase.
Ream after ream of deciduous rhyme
Blew past the toads where they sculled through the slime;
They belched and they gulped out a thousand refrains
Like the rumble of thunder that ushers the rains.
Yet though the bardic toads did chunter
And rhymes full tore the gloom asunder;
Despite the wisdom hewn of lyric
A curse came with this panegyric:
With each new verse there rose an ague,
Churning foul each sage's stomach,
Making seem each lowly hummock
A fleapit full of plague.
A knight of highest polo fame-
Galbanum was this noble's name-
This lord of stealth and argent steel,
As loyal to his master's seal
As list-proved champions brave,
Crept up unto the nearest toad
Which not the slightest interest showed
And sought its song to stave.
Yet as Galbanum drew his knife,
The toad at last perceived the strife;
It quickly scanned a canny line,
A cobbled block of foot and sign,
And with a belching, metric flow
Spake a shield to stop the blow:
"It was before the lime-slaked fossils,
When flagellates were the lone apostles
Of a churchyard sea awash with life,
Newly forged and not yet rife,
But sparsely spread upon the deep
In pseudopods that snake and creep;
It was in times of ancient power
That there were forms most grim and dour
Who sought advantage in the gain
Of causing protoplasmic pain;
When first the movement of the tide
Was a tolling bell to chide
Those chronic marks on the sublime.
So it was that the sea kept score
And equity was first ashore.
So let this simple chime rang true:
Suffer the meek, lest the tide turn on you!"
Canto Fifth
Amongst the beams the shadows roosted;
The minstrel was the wear'r for worsted;
His coarse cut clothes a sop for beer,
One eye cast far, the other near.
The barman mopped around his feet,
The wasted bard did low repeat:
"Suffer the tide, lest you turn meek!"
And with that he lost the will to speak.
He slept there downed upon the table,
And dreamed of lands of myth and fable,
Until he woke in pale dawn's light,
And scanned the room with double sight.
"It's all too much! Alack! Alas!
Was there not wisdom in that glass?
Did not that spider talk in rhyme?
Where went all the wasted time?"
With bloodshot eyes his focus stopped
Upon the distant countertop;
He saw a bottle yet half low
And no barman to keep it so.
In one swift move he was at feet,
And twice as swift fell on his knees;
He crawled across the mottled floor
And at the bottle made to claw.
Three swipes it took to gain his prize;
Now on the floor the wastrel lies,
The bottle dry as island sands:
Once more he dreams of ancient lands.
Canto Sixth
Galbanum sheathed his dagger blade,
For with a swamp the toad had made
A new-cleft Hyperborea
Hewn from wretchèd nausea.
The next bold sage of steel and might,
Aloud did laugh and mock the knight:
"How sharp-tongued is your steel good squire?
As sharp as the ribbet arose from the mire?
There must be a fever aloft from this bog,
For sure it is ill to be beat by a frog!"
Galbanum bowed with mock aplomb,
And when he rose he bit his thumb.
"Sneer you may at amphibious verse,
But ask I must, which pray is the worse:
To hear and be humbled by so lowly a toad,
Or to be over-hasty with your own goad?
If you think ye immune from malarial lyric
Forgive my disdain, for I am a cynic!"
"A challenge!" cried his rival, Nystagmus by name,
A sage of good living and plentiful frame;
He drew out a broadsword and with haughty mien,
Approached the toad on its island of green.
To sky he held the glinting edge;
Extolled the time a hearty pledge
Of hatred to the slow, cold blood
That through green veins did ebb and flood.
Nystagmus was about to dart,
When with a toadish, silent art
The creature sat upon the slough
Seemed to spy him well enough.
It seemed that with each twitch and tic
That heart, though green, was full and quick,
For underneath the paper leaves
This toad-destroying Damocles
Was smitten with a verse:
"When first the trees did start to spread
Their roots through dust and ochre red;
When forest's sultry canopy
Made green the thunder-croaking sky:
When there were shapes upon the boughs
That fell and walked and took up ploughs:
When all this happ'd and man was cast
Of ochre and the acorn mast;
It was that he first learned to gib
And call this fresh-walked Earth his crib
To draw his words from tiers of rye,
To cast a newly tearless eye
On all that he surveyed:
That surely he believed was made
Some paradise amongst the sheaves
Some newfound font to pen his leaves
Of history sublime:
Yet forth from this new measured time
There marched a second measure grave
With at its head the will to stave
Those of others, to cleft and beat
And leave the birds of prey to greet
Them to the leaden clouds;
As though they found in fields of rye
And ochre some new crimson dye
To stain their hempen shrouds.
So when you seek this skull to stave
Think whether you be knight, or knave;
Though dulcet sounds the harmonium
T'is the ribbet brings encomium."
Aghast and rapt all of the same
Moment, the sage was struck as lame;
The blade fell useless from his hand
And lodged deep in the oil-black sand;
The hilt sent shadings long and low
To cast a stark sun-crossed shadow.
"What happ'd here?" enquired Galbanum,
"Forsooth in that toad's arcanum
Didst thou not shun all measly gleaning
Of subtle stress and lofty meaning?"
Mute and fast Nystagmus stood,
As a carving on the rood;
He made no sound, nor tried respond
But cast eyes down into the pond
As though fixed far away.
Although his cheeks yet bore the blood
And through his lungs still breath did flood
His soul, it seemed to stray
There was the while a lull unbroken,
And not a whispered word was spoken,
Until a weathered seneschal
Broke the hush that held them thrall
"It seems to me," he dared to quip,
"That this is meet to be hardship:
To swipe at thoughts discorporate
And suffer good Nystagmus' fate.
Yet perhaps there is a way less loth:
To use not swords but instead the cloth.
A mighty fastness we shall build,
A monast'ry with good things filled;
With learnèd texts of wisdom fine,
From subtle Nature's mind.
If there be corners of this world,
If there be parchments left unfurled,
Age-tanned maps and star-charts curled
In velum we shall bind."
Canto Seventh
The tale must here a moment halt,
Not for Inspiration's fault,
But to let the wastrel collect
His senseless form and resurrect
Once more to cold daylight.
For the wastrel, still full prone
Has been from out the tavern thrown
With all the barman's might.
With the last dregs of spirit warm,
Still moving his bedraggled form,
The wastrel marches to the drum
Of rain, and starts a song to hum;
His lips move with untimely slurs
And eulogise the final verse.
So watch the slur of thoughts unbound
And listen for the garbled sound;
Velum may hold the pages fast
But wastrels will long books outlast.
Canto Eighth
To say the sages sacked the marsh,
For sure would stand a little harsh,
But when they left the ghostly slough
They had a bag of toads in tow.
They hurdled furze in thorny pales,
O'er crested hills and pummelled dales,
With banded hooves of iron red
That caught the daylight as it fled.
A last sly dart of amber shone
All gleaming where the troop had gone
And chased them as they topped a hill,
To fire the crest with clement skill;
Whereon the final tones of dusk
Set heaving an inclement busk
Of banded croaks in synchrony
That eulogised this harmony:
"The sun had set and ris untold
For many years before the skald
Did learn to tilt his head to write
While mulling in the steeped sunlight;
To take his eye from off his quill
And set the words that echo still
In ancient lays of ogam stone
That spoke of light, yet light outshone.
It seems too wondrous far to tell
That from a stone in ocean's swell
A beach was made and on it stood
A being with breath to call it good;
Yet not alone could he now breathe
But to others could his thoughts bequeath;
He was to be the ocean's liege,
For on that beach, stood the first sage."
The sunlight died and moonlight fierce
Cast silver as the hooves did pierce
The hoary ground, set hard with frost<
br />
And rivers where the ice was crossed.
Swift they ran, the road ahead
Was like a line cast in the lead;
For they thought not to glance aside;
To glance would be to break their stride.
Had not the moonlight been so spare
They may have chanced a fleeting glare
Over heathland of a silvered-brown;
For there decked in pastoral gown
The shepherd girl stood stock.
She watched as the sages rode on clear,
Far from the unnamed hillside drear,
Where rested her good flock.
In laic mode she whispered low
Words spoke to chase, though uttered slow:
"I pray the hills remember well
As nodding monkshood bells do knell
That bitterness, the sagest taste
Has stalked diffuse across this waste
For time immemorial;
That long before the songs of man
The first primordial lines did scan
The furrowed brows of each sage clan
With fear corporeal;
So look upon the monast'ry,
Built tall from blocks of sandstone scree
And windows glazed with the true tree,
The cruciferous seal;
Look upon the subtle craft
When it stands real yet true to draft;
And think how those sage gambollers
Became a race of thoughtful scholars."
With the last line the moon dipped low
And sunrise shone across the snow;
The shepherdess walked in the rays
And gloried was the day, and sage.
The Cutlers Of The Howling Hills Page 8
