Toll the Hounds

We were drowning amidst petals and leaves

On the Plain of Sethangar

Where dreams jostled like armies on the flatland

And to sing of the beauty of all these blossoms

Was to forget the blood that fed every root

On the Plain of Sethangar

We cried out for shelter from this fecund storm

The thrust and heave of life on the scouring winds

Was dry as a priest’s voice in fiery torment

On the Plain of Sethangar

And no wise words could be heard in the roar

Of the laughing flowers reaching out to the horizon

As the pungent breath left us drunk and stagger’d

On the Plain of Sethangar

Must we ever die in the riches of our profligacy

Succumbing to the earth cold and dark each time

Only to burst free wide-eyed in innocent birth

On the Plain of Sethangar?

Which god strides this field scythe in hand

To sever the grandiose mime with edged judgement

Taking from our souls all will in bundled sheaves

On the Plain of Sethangar

To feed as befits all burdensome beasts?

Flowers will worship the tree’s fickle blessing of light

Forests reach into the sweetness of a sky beyond touch

Even as streams make pilgrimage to the sea

And the rain seeks union with all flesh and blood

Hills will hold fast over every plain, even Sethangar

And so we dream of inequity’s end

As if it lay within our power

There in the plainness of our regard

So poorly blinded to beauty. .

Declamation (fragment), (?) Keneviss Brot First Century Burn’s Sleep

Groaning like a beast in its death throes, the ship seemed to clamber up on to the black rocks before the keel snapped and the hull split with a splintering cry. Cut and bloodless corpses rolled and slid from the deck, spilling into the thrashing foam where pale limbs flopped and waved in the tumult before the riptide dragged them tumbling over the broken sea floor, out and down into the depths. The lone living figure, who had tied himself to the tiller, was now tangled in frayed ropes at the stern, scrabbling to reach his knife before the next huge wave exploded over the wreck. A salt-bleached hand — the skin of the palm hanging in blighted strips — tugged the broad-bladed weapon free. He slashed at the ropes binding him to the upthrust tiller as the hull thundered to the impact of another wave and white spume cascaded over him.

As the last strand parted he fell on to his side and slid to the crushed rail, the collision driving the air from his lungs as he pitched across the encrusted rock, then sagged, limp as any corpse, into the churning water.

Another wave descended on to the wreck like an enormous fist, crushing the deck beneath its senseless power, then dragging the entire hull back into the deeper water, leaving a wave of splintered wood, lines and tattered sail.

Where the man had vanished, the inrushing seas swirled round the black rock, and nothing emerged from that thrashing current.

In the sky overhead dark clouds clashed, spun sickly arms into a mutual embrace, and though on this coast no trees rose from the ravaged ground, and naught but wind-stripped grasses emerged from pockets here and there among the rock and gravel and sand, from the wounded sky dried, autumnal leaves skirled down like rain.

Closer to the shore heaved a stretch of water, mostly sheltered from the raging seas beyond the reef. Its bottom was a sweep of coral sand, agitated enough to cloud the shallows.