The Ecteiroglyphs of the Lorwolm

In the fourth gyre of the Age of the Sinquel Memorial:

An interpretation of a wild dream half-remembered:
The stones of the pit cast out of your stripped grave
Will be trodden under foot by your foolish beloved,
Who will emerge from middle bones and other books,
Waiting for the sky to break over lost deserts, lost islands.

Your husband's spirit-stirring drums will speak fear
To a god in a crest of birch-trees on a gray-clouded rock.
He brings forth the roaring of the seawall taken down,
Decimating a becalmed population steadfast in its refusal.

All those who have come before will ascend soundlessly
Upon the abdomen's third mute breath. Thus cleansed
And lightened, they fly to the Dome of Intermittency.


Copyright © 2009 Eirene Kuanyin Skadhi

In the third gyre of the Age of Eichenblon's Crater

The bald standard-bearer marked by the severity
Of her injury:
She hides herself in manacles and loses the use of
Her hands
For the duration of the Winter of Stone Grass and
Brown Ice.
When the links of frost come unhinged, her grasp
Is re-built
By the clock-makers of a far city in the West.

While following a strange course through black mist
On the path to catastrophe on the mountain of shadows,
She is trusted by falling salamanders on the wing
With no gentle sentiment in their ponderous eyes.

An unseen hand digging between mortar and stone
Yields a ghost with a dragon's claw scribed upon
His funereal bands.
The countersign is the facsimile of a scarlet ornament.

In the third gyre of the Age of the Glass Council:

An edictal bloodline is born: the poet Maogul-atoda
In the likeness of a daughter of the moon.
She recounts the sorrow of her long search
For the lake named Throat of Omaplar
And the headwaters of three major rivers.

The riven serpent unites before going to war.
Those of the unwavering earth will hold for their
Outcast prince,
Singing to their sacred lamps, plumes tied to their hair.
Those of the white lily will fall for the guardian churches.

Twelve oxen caparisoned with flowers, amber
And gold foil,
Kneel before an ornate dais crowned by an arrow
Of raw iron
Etched with fire and spoilt with thick pink rust.