Vaunt
You bring out against me Sennacherib's host,
the resource and reason your legions can boast;
but wind and the wave and the fish of the sea
will fight all the armies that fight against me.
Your words made of razors and forceful with rage
will die on your tongue, will die on the page,
will fall like felled oaks and snap like frail cords
through gnawing of mice and the word of the Lord.
You may bring out your words like the rush of a sea,
your weapons of paper, but I shall not flee;
my kin and my people the promise shall see:
the stars in their courses fight those who fight me.
Tapio
The blue flower grows in the realm of Tapio,
where tree-roots deeper than any mountain's grow,
where forest-tops are marching like the sea,
an endless and everlasting sea,
and mead-paws dance in fields untouched by snow
where blossoms flourish whose names nobody knows
on a hill whose name nobody knows.
Rust and Fire
One in kind are rust and fire.
Ruin is combustion slow;
flaming quickly is desire.
Flame will have the sharper glow,
spread the fiercer, fairer light,
but wood must rust with aching speed,
give but transient delight.
Death is from consuming need,
craving turns to cinder each,
burning deep in mind and heart,
universal in its reach,
dark, corrosive, through every part.
Decadence with more control
corrosion too will spread abroad;
iron burns in part and whole
from air and malice of the gods.
Decay is merely slow desire:
one in kind are rust and fire.
Despair
War among the gods! World is shaken,
Mountain thrusts back sea,
Sea swallows violent mountains,
Winds uproot eternal stones,
Monsters fight in boundless deep.
Even gods know harsh defeat,
Battles ended. The darkest god,
Starless, lightless void that burns,
Fell to his knees, broken crown.
A chain-encircled mighty form
Driven across the wastes,
Brought to judgment by the gods.
I traced a lightless thread
Errant in my dreams. At its end
There poured a windless sea.
It sorrowed at world's end.
Stars were deep within it.
Fog on fog, wisps of cloud,
Rolled across the starry glass.
Upon the shore a ship of bones
Was moored; it whispered words,
"Come," and I embarked.
By mind, not wind, it moved
Across the glassy sea,
And carried me to sullen isles.
Upon a rain-wet granite stone
A form of darkness sat in bonds.
From it blindness poured.
I quailed and fled. When night falls,
When falls the fell defeat,
When mind by gloom is chained,
Some thread of darkened wisp
Across that glassy sea has curled
And tangled with your thoughts.
One strand, one thread, one wisp.
Our world knows dark as night,
Or else the chthonic cave.
Things are darker still, and by still sea,
The darkest god is iron-bound,
As rain that mothers rust pours down
Until the iron twists and breaks.
