Jubal's poems

[Jubal]

The Song of Fen'harel

Chords:

May the dread wolf take you when the snows begin to fall
Am                              Em                           Am                       G
When the aravel's no shelter from the winter's howling call
Am                              Em                           Am                       Em
When all is bare, and in his lair he howls unto the sky,
Am                              G                           Am                       Em
A howl from times that never die.
G    Em   Am

Instrumental
Am                              Em                           Am                       Em
Am                              Em                           Em                       E
C                              G                           Em                       Am
G    Em   Am

May the dread wolf take you when the snows begin to fall
When the aravel's no shelter from the winter's howling call
When all is bare, and in his lair he howls unto the sky,
A howl from times that never die.

May the dread wolf take you when the halla's hooves run cold
As through the dales we've hunted been, through stories ever told.
So men who made us alien in cities built of stone,
Will hear our wolven howl of home.

May the dread wolf take you when your world is filled with fear
When all that's left is rage and truth then Fen'Harel draws near,
A wolf to tear the clouds apart and shape again this world,
The dread wolf's song a prayer unfurled

May the dread wolf take you where he builds his newborn day,
Where fear and sin and vallaslin through magic fade away,
Through broken clans and eluvians is passed the trickster's cry -
A howl from times that never die.
The dread wolf's howl shall never die.

[Jubal]

A Mammoth's Malady

Why did the mammoth sneeze so loud,
In ages long gone by?
Its sniffles snuffled trumpet-like,
Into an ice-age sky?

Why did it swing its drippy trunk,
Before man's fires were lit?
Before bless you had first been blessed,
Or history first writ?

Such beasts were mightier than we,
Majestic and contented,
Except that clearing trunks is hard,
And tissues weren't invented.

When woollen coats were still in vogue,
No bells for mammoths tolled,
But yet they sneezed so very loud -
For none escape the cold.

[Jubal]

Loom over Mountains

'Loom over mountains, child'
Said the wise old woman
Who lived by the stream
Which flowed like silks and linens rippling from the valley-side

I was only small, then,
But I took those words to my heart of hearts
And saw the mountains' majesty
That in my dreams I surpassed and shadowed
Perhaps a restorer, a rebuilder of ancient things
Other times a gift-giver, uplifter and hope-singer,
And yet again a creator, a forger of novelties beyond imagining -
For such were those whose marks on the land were valleys
And the mountains their grey and lonely afterthoughts

I was only small, then,
But even as I grew
And I came to know the blue of jay-feathers in the valley's skies,
The silk-shine of beetle-wings and the rich cloth of petals first in bloom
I came to love these crafts of nature tucked-away,
The little threads entwined to bring life to its totality,
But ancient things were falling, and gifts went ungiven, and new-forged things were made in iron hues alone:
So I hurt within my heart of hearts
And asked myself, day by day
Still to try
And loom over mountains

I am only small, still:
And I shall never be so tall as the mountain peak
From where I took the smallest parts of stone
And, hole-drilled, set them to weighted warp -
Which, entwined, dream-wefting,
Draw me into the world,
Toward those who might craft with me a tale kinder than iron forges know,
Who might find my gift of silk or linen and pass their own gifts along the thread
Who might weave in bright-eyed wonder some new life for ancient things
That I could never have made
Had I been a lonely giant above the peaks
Never knowing
That there are high places that none who hear the world are ever called to conquer.

So I will craft the flows
Of silks and linens that ripple blue in shawls and dresses by the valley-side
For I am wise myself now
So I know
That I will always pick
A loom over mountains

[The Seamstress]

I like it? Though I'm not sure I understand it.    Would you like to share your thoughts and explain it? (No worries if not, I know that writing is quite a personal thing and it's okay to not want to talk about the background/context!) I guess I'm just bad at poetry, writing as well as reading, lol.

[Jubal]

So, the core idea comes from the duality of "loom" as the verb for "looking bigger and overshadowing" and the noun for the thing you use for weaving. The woman's statement at the start is basically first misinterpreted as "you should loom over mountains" until the speaker eventually realises that it means almost the opposite: that they should favour the loom (and creativity, homeliness, and their love of small things) over mountains (which are here something of an allegory for "greatness" in its conventional sense).

So stanza 1 I guess is the "prophecy" that sets up the poem

So stanza 2 is about the speaker's dreams of greatness, in line with what the wise woman told them.

Stanza 3 involves the speaker coming to terms with their own size and preference for small things, creation and curiosities, but also retaining the tension between that and them feeling they ought to strive for great things, because the world is actually in a pretty bad way.

Stanza 4 is the realisation that these things shouldn't be in tension: that through the things they naturally prefer they are better able to reach people and do better things than if they'd tried to become some single-handed enormous I-can-fix-everything hero.

And stanza 5 closes things out with the speaker, now wise enough to understand the original sentence, appreciating that their craft, not some abstract heroism, is the thing they should be doing: that they should pick the loom over the mountains.

Does that make sense? It's probably a bit of a word salad of a poem in places, it was just one of those ideas that needed writing when it happened.

[The Seamstress]

Makes perfect sense. Thank you for the explanation (which confirms that I like it, lol).

[Jubal]

I'm glad you like it