More writing, simplify map, agony and ecstasy
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Madison Scott-Clary
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date: 2019-08-29
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weight: 4
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> I assume you went looking for one of these execrable poems of yours?
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I did. I wasn't really able to find much from The Before Times, but I found a few from shortly after while prowling through my LiveJournal and archives of my old site in high school.
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> [RedFox! Productions](https://web.archive.org/web/2005*/http://ranna.babylonia.flatirons.org/), right?
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Gah, yeah. I was a kid, alright?
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> If you say so.
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September 26, 2003:
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<div class="verse">I.
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Borne through air,
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Close my eyes.
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Wind ruffles hair
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Soul sighs,
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Heart flies;
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I’m the wind.
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I flow east:
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Over the plains,
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Over land creased.
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Current refrains,
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Cloud stains
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As I build.
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Trees bow at my
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Will
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To move drives me
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Onward
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I push through
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Mountains
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Do nothing but
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Divert
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The rain as I
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Flow.
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II.
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Borne through air -
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Rise up high -
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Driven there,
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Earth nigh,
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I sigh;
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I’m the wind.
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I flow west:
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Past the lakes,
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Water my guest;
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Thunder makes
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Noise, wakes,
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As I storm.
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Sand flies at my
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Force
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Builds as I
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Push
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Across the
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Land
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Flows beneath my
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Self
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Means nothing to
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Wind.
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III.
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Borne through air,
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Through the night
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And dawn fair.
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No fight,
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Only flight;
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I’m the wind.
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I flow south
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On the ocean,
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On delta’s mouth
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My motion
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Just notion
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As I breathe.
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Waves break as I
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Drive
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Past the thin
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Sands
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Lift themselves to my
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Body
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Waxes as I
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Press
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Through the stillness of
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Night.
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IV.
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Borne through air,
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Around the world
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And forests I tear;
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Ferns furled,
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Trees burled;
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I am the wind.
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I flow north,
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Across the ice;
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I roll forth
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Past spice –
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So nice –
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As I change.
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Men bask as I
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Warm
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Drops of rain
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Fall
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Colored leaves
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Shiver
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Because of the
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Chill
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Wind blows on
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Past.</div>
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> It's not without its own sense of charm.
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I suppose. It's crude. It's a bit heavy-handed.
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> Your others are not?
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Well, okay, fair. I like to think that I've improved nonetheless.
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> Are these old ones not creative? Are they still just play?
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The more I think of it, the more I think it's that they're just too...work. They're not creative, because they're too mechanical. I had realized that writing wasn't just play, so I stopped playing altogether.
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> Wrong answer.
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Tell me about it.
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January 11, 2003:
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<div class="verse">What hath man wrought!
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When faced with the question of love
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Or seeking peace with the answer thereof,
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Or faced with life peril-fraught,
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Created a god, or several, to satisfy
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Some need to fulfill or deny
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A lacking -
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A slacking
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On someone else's behalf,
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Or his own behalf -
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And on the world a question of faith brought.
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And when a man, endowed
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With the ability to make his own God,
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Does so with nary a nod,
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And finds the god shan't be cowed,
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What does he then?
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And when a group of men
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Make their God
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With nary a nod,
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And cow him easily, rightly
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To them, and find him tightly
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bound, what then, with a god bowed?
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What then, indeed, should a God,
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Now lesser than his creators, do
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When his creators move to gods new?
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Is he then still a God?
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Or is that when God dies,
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Not bloated with swarms of flies,
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But forgotten?
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Not rotten,
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Forgotten and immortal, what then?
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Does he hope to come again,
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Rising a second time, perhaps again to be God?
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One would hope that the God, being omniscient
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Would realize he was no longer, otherwise
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Might he become destructive? Likewise,
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A god, waiting patient
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Could become restless,
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Try to leave his creators breathless,
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Again,
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But then,
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Be pronounced a heretic
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By all but the hermetic
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And others of the new God ignorant.
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So hence a people divided
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Those of Whispers and those of Nanon,
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Fight to the tooth and fight to the bone,
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Until over Whispers Nanon presided;
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And when those of Nanon took
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Speech from the Whispers so as to look
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And not hear,
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They here
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Those of Whispers with
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Supposed powers of myth
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Of creation with speech's remnants provided.
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So it was before the fall of Whispers that
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Faith of most all lay in technology,
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Remnants of religion lay in astrology
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And superstitious fears like the black cat.
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Only after the fall did the faiths
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Of only the Whisperers turn to mysterious wraiths
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And gods,
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But the odds
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That one of the gods was taken more seriously
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Than the rest was small, and not mysteriously,
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The small bit of Faith quickly passed as society's scat
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Now, it's come that those of Nanon have all but forgotten
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Those of Whispers except perhaps in myth
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Maybe portrayed as consorting with
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Black cats or something equally rotten.
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But for the Whisperers, the city
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Of Nanon is very real, also denial of pity
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Of sunlight,
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For sunlight
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Is blocked by the city directly overhead
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And the Whisperers know of only shadow instead;
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Only death out from beneath the city to be gotten.
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The magic that's spoken of those
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Of the Whispers, is often made
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Out to be more, but because of their stayed
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Speech, only whispers remain in quite prose.
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So through the long stretches of time,
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The Whisperers, through long stretches of rhyme
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Can make -
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Only make -
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What they wish, with words divine,
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Benign, or malign,
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And in their creations complete trust repose.
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So begins a story, often told but never yet writ
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Of a divided people still the same
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And the rise and fall of a god played like a game.
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While not true itself, it is truth lit:
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As men continue to create and live under gods,
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What would happen if the gods, at odds,
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Warred and fell,
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Raising hell
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In the process? What would happen
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In a society misshapen
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If a wrathful god fell and no one cared a whit?</div>
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> Ah yes, your Keats phase.
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It was a mixture of Keats and Larry Niven, I think.
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> That is intensely Madison.
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Thanks.
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I had recently read *The Ringworld Throne*, so I was thinking about vertically stratified cities, and had also been on a Keats kick ever since reading *The Hyperion Cantos*, so I decided I would write a sci-fi epic poem to support my conlang.
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It's a mess.
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> Could be worse.
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Could be better.
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