Thankyou
Another one about my trip to America:
VindlandsagaHe took a trail from mountain lands,
The east-march, the old kingdom,
The wind was fair, the tide was fine;
And up above the seas of cloud
That rolled and soared, Odin’s son’s ocean,
He watched from on a ship that passed
A long road through the sky.
The whale-boat spewed its Jonah,
On the grey earth, left with nothing,
Where the babel-towers soar
The mountains of a rolling plain,
Where eagle-folk who serpent slew,
Atop a thorn-plant wreathed in blue,
Came by many winding roads
To shape the steel
To craft the earth
To cut and work the world
Into babel towers by lake-shores
Where summers burn and winds curse
And a thousand gods speak a thousand tongues.
On iron roads, Vulcan-forged, sped the traveller,
To the gathering, the meeting-place,
Of those who seek the old ways, the lost knowings,
Munin’s folk, ravens remembering,
As the giants’ bane raged in the heavens,
And only blackbirds, blood-winged,
Circled waters in that place.
There they played the King’s game,
And spoke of strangely starlit lands,
Of Arthur and of Gorhendad,
Of Prester John and priests.
And among them came short-beard,
Chief among the traveller’s folk,
Among them came dark-eyed,
With subjects ringed in gold,
Among them came flame-hair,
With new-read runes from ancient walls,
Among them came two thousand more,
With story and with guile.
And among them came the traveller,
Who speaking roamed from sea to sea,
And time to time,
Of the moon-country, land of Mushtar’s justice,
Of the she-King, the fourth of three,
Of the godless she drew to her,
In the moon-country, land of Otarid’s wisdom,
Many sky-roads from their meeting.
His errand sped, to grey road set the traveller,
With Hathor’s child, the crafter of colours,
And passing by the chariots, smoking, steel-born,
And passing by the club-wielders, cursed by twilight, ill-starred,
They came to another land
A hill-country, boulder-strewn.
A land where old ways linger,
Of horse-wagons, corn-fields,
Forests on the hillside,
A land of vultures wheeling
Ereshkigal’s birds,
Cursed to croak soundless.
There long ago the mound-builders,
Red flint’s shapers, long paths roaming,
Gathered never dreaming
That one day such a traveller
Would stand upon their home long past
Unknowing of its heroes
And recalling foreign gods
When their own fated faith had passed
Beyond the cry of ravens
And beyond the croak of vultures
To a memory of a memory
That whispered round the earthen rings,
Where in the mead of poetry
And the flight of the birds
Its last taste can be found.
For then in twilight dimming
Came fairy-birds, flame-necked,
Steeds of Gallivespians
That came that way from southern lands
Where never falls the snow
They danced in twilight dimming,
While fires burned to ember-glows,
They, Titania’s messengers,
Fast-wing, Flower-drinker, Bright-winged herald,
These and more he named them
As the mound-builders had known them
As they heralded Yavanna
As they heralded lost summers past
As the world sank into moonlight
As the world sank into starlight
As the world sank out of time.
From herald unto master,
The errant was called with the sun,
For tarrying and tarrying
Must ill become a traveller,
The hammer-wielder’s white-foam seas
Beckoned in the dawning.
As travellers must often end
Their stories with retracing steps,
So to the East-March he was bound, to the old kingdom.
He set sail for the morning.
On a long road
Through the darkness
Where Bragi bites the coal
On a long road
Through the darkness
Where storytellers all shall pass
On a long road
Through the darkness
The dark path that lightward leads,
On a long road
Through the darkness;
On a long road through the sky.