XXIII: Books of a feather-robed sage

In the sixth gyre of the Age of Four Wandering Moons:

A new mood stirs under those yellow leafed boughs
Which shake
Within the impressed abstraction of scrolls from both
17th centuries.
A spring of words overflows the closest drawn goal in steel—
Poetry generated in a wide range of free-given street noise,
Raising delicate hopes for the strength of the resolved city.

The first two lines of the books of a feather-robed sage
Written on a thousand rolls of silk kept for all good:
Elusive time immediately experienced is frequently unfair.
Question or believe, but light travels slowly within the grave.

From the tale of the count who has not yet named a successor:
The countess arrays her daughter in her most resplendent robes
Clear-cut as laquered satin, gently shaped as the lining
Of a seashell.

XXII. Illuminating the lotus spirit

In the fortenth gyre of the Age of the Nascent Vaunthald:

The hooded frog, a great silver boss on its iron forehead,
Stands above the red cedar temple for seven hundred years,
Guarding the imperial headdress wrapped with silk wires.
Granite clouds coiled and dusky loom over balanced pools
Illuminating the lotus spirit before the perception of every eye.

A rough devouring entity with no rules or principles
Will live unknown and dominate the hollow crown;
According to true etiquette he had vowed his constancy
To an allegiance lost not in fire nor earth but in water.

Black rain sickness will lay siege swift as a shadow,
Livid outlines forming round the mark of measuring metal
Stamped in the reddened throat of the secret usurper.

XXI. A fatal child

In the ladder gyre in the Age of the Bunin Kings:

Behold, in a field thick inlaid with yellow patines
Of summer roses,
The flower of men, a fatal child driven by the deep power of joy,
Indifferent to restless violence surrounding the pendant world,
Ignorant of the bright sunset gold of painted pomp and blind
To the glare of glass thrones charged with mystic change.

A long entwisted circle of allies bound by sympathy in blood
To this Queen, will stand in her proper greatness and hold out
Against great thousands, when monarchs play the tyrants
In the barren mile of the Mediterranean's common age.

The Kindly Race, never-resting, with gentle work
And endless care,
Diffuse the false art of ancestral sermons wreathed
In golden theaters,
Unloosing the chained foot of cold winged Oumesan.

XX. The ironic peer

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

The herald of a hideous winter, careless of what he brings,
Comes with stout rage strapped hard to the locked thunder
Of heavy machinery lumbering under the inland sea.
His rude marshal counts random correlations and predictions
In a given splatter of yolk, wine, grain and gravel.

A seafaring force from the cavernous island of adamantine
Confounds him with news from all emerging nations
And a patriot's blood well-spent in a blinding landscape
Of milk-white sand overflown with the divinity of myth.

The ironic peer, drawing a line of natural light
And simple color
With a cart map and tripod compass, will guide the flagship
Through unwilling sleep, driven outward into godlike hardship.

XIX. The fall of Nagarjuna

In the gyre vaunted of the Last Gohlguanarchy:

Eighteen thousand watch a stark dorsal cross rise
In the sky behind the toxic brim of Jirreshnag's moon
Fallen in dim eclipse, air shorn of disastrous twilight.
The sole ruined shareholder of an isolate empire
Sends them forth into serried ranks of horizontal mist.

Their passage through air begins with a pair of hours
When the broad sun new-risen weighs heavily between
Two slaves.
The second one in the light of a double-edged threat
Cuts and binds brass and stone to blunt the lion's paws.

Against the wreckful siege of battering days,
Nagarjuna's gates of steel in rocks impregnable
Are no stronger than summer's honey breath.

XVII. The serpent's skull

In the sixth gyre of the Age of the Good Remainder:

A multitude of believers follow the dog-headed beggar
Over darkening thresholds and under sheer canopies
Of ceremonial pavilions standing fast in the
Churning current.
The rushing darkness is partially broken by reflections
Of a shower of gems through the spiked wheel.

After arguing with a bull-throated pagan disguised as
A hermit,
The Moskeel in a threadbare coat and a crown of nails,
With the devil on a leash, gives up his kingdom
For a broken cup, a basket of quail, and a branch
Of oranges.

Entangled hands form into an inverted bowl
That hides an alabaster box that holds
The serpent's skull carved from green-tinged ivory.

XVI. The noble dwarf's watchman

In the gyre vaunted of the Age of Eichenblon's Crater:

The pyre of the mob does not satisfy the vengeance
Of the excommunicated tribe of the Northern Deep.
The subtle blood of this breed becomes infirm
With smoke;
They tremble behind a line of unnatural towers
And draw their harmless swords against themselves.

After Orion's third sister marries the noble dwarf's
Watchman,
Her indifference becomes reluctance and regret.
They are parted as her carriage passes slowly
Through the gate of recent woe, never to meet again.

Opposite a vine-clustered chair two faces are depicted,
One in the forlorn grandeur of eternal marble,
The other in the dead shrewdness of sullen iron.

XV. The poet's wife

In the seventh gyre of the Age of Broeudhe-bas:

The poet's wife pregnant with eminent consequences,
Digging dreams in a narrow circle of fading light,
Loses faith in her star and yields up a ghost.
Winter's first message freezes her inside her coat,
A garment of parched grass and scraps of paper.

Two wild beasts uniformed with brilliant cloth,
Strong in talents, character and property,
Rise in opposition to an antiquated system
Gathered round a dangerous madman.

Three half-brothers sleep in the grasp of a
Curious transformation;
After three years, they will be unearthed
From their tombs
In the last gray hour of Saint Dymphaena's morning.

XIV. Falling salamanders on the wing

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.

The Lorwolm Index

XIII. A blueprint from a madmen's reveries

In the clauted (cleated?) gyre of the Age of the Nascent Vaunthald:

With a blueprint from a madmen's reveries
And the hands of the forerunners of Thessarret,
A wanderer builds a new house of pale green jade.
The stone walls cast their shadow upon a stately cedar
In the old castle garden of Aureospa's grave.

War will come to the hollow streets of the outer verge:
The cloud-fringed vanguard fights in silence,
Bearing black dishonor along with misfortune,
Scorned by all those who battle beside them.

At the appointed hour between three citadels,
The ashen-haired servant with tattooed hands
Will claim the natural shelter of her attending blood.

XII. Overtaken by the Dawn-breaker

In the second gyre of the Age of Four Wandering Moons:

A critical juncture will be overtaken by
The Dawn-breaker;
Queer and base, his sublimity is barely perceptible;
Cunning and brave, no-one will judge him at his
True value.
Three unimpeachable historians will call him villain,
A shabby clown performing in tapestried parlors.

In iron shoes and a steel jacket with prismatic
Dorsal plates,
A prisoner languishing in the cavern of a hundred walls,
Retains stewardship of ten thousand illuminated
Manuscripts.
Light and glory, honors and commendations, reward
Her perseverance.

Parched encroachments into every water on earth
Will be forestalled by a deep reservoir for the
Entire planet;
The lion's share for two million in the sacrificed
Territories.

XI. A summer's marriage-feast despoiled

In the dialected gyre of the Age of the Middle Gohlguanarchy:

From a summer's marriage-feast despoiled in reel
And rout,
The knight stands aloof; he wears upon his shield
The puppet crown
And slays with his sword fifteen long-suffering captives.
In thirty long years he will defeat twelve generals,
Burn ten churches, demolish ten temples, and build
Ten cities.

His denatured bride, widely praised and most
Closely guarded,
Arises with his silver-bedecked allies to supplant him.
The perfect cavalier cannot comprehend this opportunity
For ambush;
In the absence of the sun, fountains spring like a cloud
Of fire.

In a great arc she brings down the cursed hilt of
His saber,
Forged in witch's oils burnt green, blue and white,
Which fractures his unwary skull but does not kill him.

X. Quaint and infamous traditions

In the itinerant gyre of the Age of the Yequirthed Crisis:

Quaint and infamous traditions prevail after
The quakes
Caused by the gravitational anomalies
Of the Y1 asteroids.
Sailors melt down the entrails of manatees for salt;
Soldiers carve hawthorn for bullets and scatter
Poppy seeds and amaranth before the thrones of infants.

Such is the fruitfulness of the original chaos:
Green child-like primates, clothed with flames,
Living along rivers and streams, bury their coffins
Filled with rich food and eat dirt from their tombs.

Gypsy bandits paint the thumbs of sleeping travelers
Held in place by a circle of rice paper and javelins,
Secured by their necks and shoulders with violin strings.

IX. A vampire tainted by burnt blood

In the sixth gyre of the Age of the Yequirthed Crisis:

On the crib of a child born with a caul
A starling finds the inscription of the Venirregantha
And tells of seventeen boundaries of existence.
A new voyage around the world will measure
The demeaned climates of several coasts and islands.

The torture of pilgrims of a children's crusade
Along the borders of the Field of Wrathful Dieties,
Will be avenged
By a bronze-footed creature, a vampire tainted
By burnt blood,
Victim of murder on the adjacent soil of Letlapa.

Foxes and jackals swim through black water beneath
The cleft gate
On the near side of Royal Asia's western fortification,
Descending into the belly of the largest kitchen of five.

VIII. The towers of the humming world

In the fourth gyre of the Age of Eichenblon's Crater:

All things are parallel, yet many are askew,
And a new leaf will be locked fast into a skin
Of consequences.
Across the wine-soaked fields of chamomile and poppy
Stand and fall the towers of the humming world;
White crows feed on the seven spleens of the coastal
Wardens.

A dusty adder marks the grim man's mossy face
With the bloody token of the mercury ion.
Inscriptions of a greatly distant empire are drawn
On the linen cloth placed under him when
He is beheaded.

The air is replenished with various living creatures
Shown in orange-red weather on rising lake waters;
This intensely cold isthmus is not of the earth.

VII. When ring draws upon ring

In the fifth gyre of the Age of the Recluded Star:

When ring draws upon ring in the sky
Towards the right,
The flesh and spirit of the ransomed king wanes
In the growth of the moon's scorched stone heart.
And a new sickle cuts no sharper than the song
Of a skylark besotted with a frost-broken brute.

In one burst gun fate opens for a follower
Of the acorn mage,
Walking with a scroll in the sole of his shoe,
Holding in a bird's-eye glove a blossomless vine
With spined husks from the branch of a barren tree.

Hidden will be the changeling, a rough female
Of one talent,
As she crouches in the round grave of storm-dogged
Loa Mu,
With a tooth in each of the twinned bodies of law
And faith.

VI. A lunar wolf will emerge

In the third gyre of the Age of the Recluded Star:

After years of seclusion frequented by terrifying
Hallucinations,
The fugitive from the sky becomes the arcane priest
Stirring mad dreams in the younger son
Of the saturnine mogul.
Torture, paralysis and remorse are the gifts
Of the gaudy Moccawmune
Who speaks of truth and patriots with a ferret's tongue.

When machines believe in cold ghosts,
From the depths of a maze, a lunar wolf will emerge,
Followed by a coarse terrapin with two legs of lead
And two legs of silver,
Bringing a map from the echidtors
Of the diminishing moon.

Strange objects cross the unnatural verge
Into the alkali soul of the immaculate triangle,
Shattering the turning point of a serene world.

V. An edictal bloodline is born

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.

IV. The odabild of Zaurik

In the ladder gyre of the Age of Four Wandering Moons:

The odabild of Zaurik, the buried host, a lord of ruin--
His transport vessel crossing the waves of the air realm
With Percevirmal’s lions, guarding the velvet bones
Of ninety-seven books,
Is finally demolished in three attacks from
The fire griffin,
Before his testimony can be heard by the poisoned seer.

A red branch and a white branch act for
The unawed nations
Exiled to the farther coast of the female pope called Salt.
The male pope known by his peacock dagger and graffiti
Demands that they return a great relic they stole.

The innermost walls of the giant planet fall away
In copper and arsenic, in plumes
Of white, yellow and brown;
The satellites fall silent amidst the roar
Of erupting sulfur.

III. Within the vanished margin

In the hooded gyre of the Age of the Shielded Immaltant:

A small force of besieged soldiers,
Sent into the midst of a storm of clamor,
Intervenes too late on behalf of the depraved ones;
Marking the empty doors with charcoal and chalk
Within the vanished margin
Of the four-volume epidemic.

A radiant wheel formed by the league of the frostborn
Is offered in wrath against the king
Of unblemished reputation.
A celebrant raven in a false costume
Feeds his infants and usurps his wives

Upon the date of execution, the outland nations
Stand with the obscure youth rising
Against thirty-five years of wickedness.