Sprintedon Hollow

Justan Tamarind: Book I       e12                           



Establishments of public speech: The House
Of Ordinaries and The Royal House
Of Princes.  The nearest to the cliff
And furthest north was visioned by the spouse
Of Moiland's first known king, Crean, as if
His name had to be preserved, though his years
Were quickly grayed with fogs of myth
Which, since the Tamarind line began, his peers
Have known reveal untruth, yet keep.  Four tiers,

Nevertheless, acclaim his primacy--
His being first to cross the Norax Sea
And rock the Moi-Rog Ocean with his ships,
His being first to plant the chortled Tree
And let the name of Moiland from his lips
On this then barbarous soil, his being first,
And therefore king, of all these heights and crypts;
His being first to turn from what was cursed,
To leave old Urop at its hardened worst,

Confused beyond a thousand years, to start
A new existence in a wilder part,
But freer, of this earth where men increase,
Or die from weakness in the living art.
And on those tiers, growing shall never cease,
For conifers and flowers, bushes
And deciduous trees, each with its lease
From the Maker on each year's time, pushes
Then toward greenness above the varied mushes

Of liverworts and mosses that have grown
Through every space between the Elcon stone
From which that monument was built: the same
White stone whose absence left this cliff, long known
To hunters from Leoma and to the game
They stalk/ along the Eribon spur, beyond
Its edge; where, after Crean came
With six armed men who were kiddishly fond
Of trampling foreign woods, the spring-formed pond,

Bright Eribon's source, lay ribboned with blood.
So Crean reigned with Di, from cloud to mud,
And never knew what she would raise to him,
And never knew what limestone wall would bud
Near the end of that spur of dastard whim,
At the top of which, as the tale goes,
A band of seven stripped themselves, to swim
In a just-discovered pond below the snows
Of Nareb.  Only Crean's blade arose.





for copyright information see homepage     Brian A. J. Salchert                  

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