Cold Front
#5 of poetry
This is the oldest thing I've written, at least that I'm ever letting anyone see.
There's some senses in which it's also the best I've ever written.
Grey mountains march at the edge of the sky.
Dark mountains glower through a narrowed eye.
From shadowed mountain vales comes a breeze long blest
And the wind rises silent from the dark northwest.
It rushes as it rises like a half-remembered hymn;
A hymn to sing at evensong when hope grows dim.
And the wind sings high and the wind sings low
And none of the windswept people know
How all of the wind died long ago
Yet still knows how to fly.
When grey mountains charged across the ramparts of the sky,
The wind sang a requiem the day it went to die.
The rainbands shattered into soft silver glass
For nothing the was could halt the wind or stay it in its pass.
The black mountains echoed the astonishment of gods
For the wind is as the seraphim, and never counts the odds.
The obsidian mansions shuddered as they felt nigh,
More dreadful than its fury, the rapture of the sky.
And the wind sweeps near and the wind sweeps far,
And none the mansions' lords there are
Can mark the day or place the hour
When the wind died at last.
The dark towers cowered as the blast went by
And the wind cried alleluia, the day it went to die.
Now grey mountains gather as the light grows old.
A breeze stirs thinly and waxes cold.
The obsidian peoples plume themselves that they need not the sky
And so the wind must come again, to teach them how to die.
The wind shall break their furnaces, and fling their wheels above.
The shall know not how to stop it. They know not its love.
And the wind blows life and the wind blows death.
And the dark wind cannot catch its breath
For peal of the bells wind mastereth
And it's own death-knell has tolled.
And the wind sends the non nobis to echo through the sky
Each eve aniversarial of the day it went to die.