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date: 2019-08-29
weight: 4
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> I assume you went looking for one of these execrable poems of yours?

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.

> [RedFox! Productions](https://web.archive.org/web/2005*/http://ranna.babylonia.flatirons.org/), right?

Gah, yeah. I was a kid, alright?

> If you say so.

September 26, 2003:

<div class="verse">I.
Borne through air,
    Close my eyes.
Wind ruffles hair
    Soul sighs,
    Heart flies;
I’m the wind.

I flow east:
    Over the plains,
Over land creased.
    Current refrains,
    Cloud stains
As I build.

Trees bow at my
          Will
To move drives me
          Onward
I push through
          Mountains
Do nothing but
          Divert
The rain as I
          Flow.


II.
Borne through air -
    Rise up high -
Driven there,
    Earth nigh,
    I sigh;
I’m the wind.

I flow west:
    Past the lakes,
Water my guest;
    Thunder makes
    Noise, wakes,
As I storm.

Sand flies at my
          Force
Builds as I
          Push
Across the
          Land
Flows beneath my
          Self
Means nothing to
          Wind.


III.
Borne through air,
    Through the night
And dawn fair.
    No fight,
    Only flight;
I’m the wind.

I flow south
    On the ocean,
On delta’s mouth
    My motion
    Just notion
As I breathe.

Waves break as I
          Drive
Past the thin
          Sands
Lift themselves to my
          Body
Waxes as I
          Press
Through the stillness of
          Night.


IV.
Borne through air,
    Around the world
And forests I tear;
    Ferns furled,
    Trees burled;
I am the wind.

I flow north,
    Across the ice;
I roll forth
    Past spice –
    So nice –
As I change.

Men bask as I
          Warm
Drops of rain
          Fall
Colored leaves
          Shiver
Because of the
          Chill
Wind blows on
          Past.</div>

> It's not without its own sense of charm.

I suppose. It's crude. It's a bit heavy-handed.

> Your others are not?

Well, okay, fair. I like to think that I've improved nonetheless.

> Are these old ones not creative? Are they still just play?

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.

> Wrong answer.

Tell me about it.

January 11, 2003:

<div class="verse">What hath man wrought!
    When faced with the question of love
    Or seeking peace with the answer thereof,
Or faced with life peril-fraught,
    Created a god, or several, to satisfy
    Some need to fulfill or deny
        A lacking -
        A slacking
    On someone else's behalf,
    Or his own behalf -
And on the world a question of faith brought.

And when a man, endowed
    With the ability to make his own God,
    Does so with nary a nod,
And finds the god shan't be cowed,
    What does he then?
    And when a group of men
        Make their God
        With nary a nod,
    And cow him easily, rightly
    To them, and find him tightly
bound, what then, with a god bowed?

What then, indeed, should a God,
    Now lesser than his creators, do
    When his creators move to gods new?
Is he then still a God?
    Or is that when God dies,
    Not bloated with swarms of flies,
        But forgotten?
        Not rotten,
    Forgotten and immortal, what then?
    Does he hope to come again,
Rising a second time, perhaps again to be God?

One would hope that the God, being omniscient
    Would realize he was no longer, otherwise
    Might he become destructive? Likewise,
A god, waiting patient
    Could become restless,
    Try to leave his creators breathless,
        Again,
        But then,
    Be pronounced a heretic
    By all but the hermetic
And others of the new God ignorant.

So hence a people divided
    Those of Whispers and those of Nanon,
    Fight to the tooth and fight to the bone,
Until over Whispers Nanon presided;
    And when those of Nanon took
    Speech from the Whispers so as to look
        And not hear,
        They here
    Those of Whispers with
    Supposed powers of myth
Of creation with speech's remnants provided.

So it was before the fall of Whispers that
    Faith of most all lay in technology,
    Remnants of religion lay in astrology
And superstitious fears like the black cat.
    Only after the fall did the faiths
    Of only the Whisperers turn to mysterious wraiths
        And gods,
        But the odds
    That one of the gods was taken more seriously
    Than the rest was small, and not mysteriously,
The small bit of Faith quickly passed as society's scat

Now, it's come that those of Nanon have all but forgotten
    Those of Whispers except perhaps in myth
    Maybe portrayed as consorting with
Black cats or something equally rotten.
    But for the Whisperers, the city
    Of Nanon is very real, also denial of pity
        Of sunlight,
        For sunlight
    Is blocked by the city directly overhead
    And the Whisperers know of only shadow instead;
Only death out from beneath the city to be gotten.

The magic that's spoken of those
    Of the Whispers, is often made
    Out to be more, but because of their stayed
Speech, only whispers remain in quite prose.
    So through the long stretches of time,
    The Whisperers, through long stretches of rhyme
        Can make -
        Only make -
    What they wish, with words divine,
    Benign, or malign,
And in their creations complete trust repose.

So begins a story, often told but never yet writ
    Of a divided people still the same
    And the rise and fall of a god played like a game.
While not true itself, it is truth lit:
    As men continue to create and live under gods,
    What would happen if the gods, at odds,
        Warred and fell,
        Raising hell
    In the process? What would happen
    In a society misshapen
If a wrathful god fell and no one cared a whit?</div>

> Ah yes, your Keats phase.

It was a mixture of Keats and Larry Niven, I think.

> That is intensely Madison.

Thanks.

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.

It's a mess.

> Could be worse.

Could be better.
