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Daily Deviation
Daily Deviation
February 26, 2014
The Fall of Epithilinon by Zark123
Featured by inknalcohol
Suggested by Chezzy-Am
Literature Text
I
Let no man speak of wars whence
No answer graced our call,
Let man remember gods thence
Gods, watchful of our fall;
Speak in silenced sighs, men,
Dead men hither sleep,
No flag here flails, amen, amen!
Who can ever beweep
Our brethren in the deep.
II
Frightened colours breached the sky,
The church bells played a dirge;
The bustling hills and vales so nigh
In crimson rage did merge,
Archers with crescents held high
Keen arrows fell like sin,
The portcullis in sorrow, shy
Interred our fathers in
The last grave of our kin.
III
Wailed the night in thunder blare;
The mangonels did come,
Lonely trumpets singed the air
When Earth ravished our home;
The eastern tower, wasting wear
For a trebuchet did bow,
Fallen stone and ballista bare
Broke its stony vow,
As the beadle mopped his brow.
IV
Mildly armoured, men at arms
Stormed the brazen fray,
Howled the castle’s cold alarms:
Ladder men up the brae!
Blazed in ire the fields and farms:
The winter’s yield was spent;
The cleric’s boon, the pastor’s charms
Burned with scorn’s base scent
To our false gods it went.
V
Rampart raised, our lofty lord
Rallied each lost knight’s lust,
Fain, one jilt his people’s sword
And relent a grain of dust;
Gentle came the primal horde
On voices that had known,
Not one had either hoped or heard
That we were not alone.
Our battle was our own.
VI
Braced the city’s mounted pride,
Known to all, all but friends;
Irate war mares, wild to ride
Hoofed the earth in hateful tens;
Rumbling drums hummed angst afar,
Crumbling corbels, flaming tar;
Lifetime’s art, the scope of breath
Whet this final craft of death
’Neath the slumber of an absent star.
VII
Dyed our paladins with rose
The castle gates with red repose,
Pikemen, then did chance a charge
Their lines remained unmoved at large,
Dancing banners paid their due
To one final, futile hue,
The battering ram, its hammer damned
The aging keep, in fervour slammed.
Yet, the gatehouse still held true.
VIII
Then like the shade’s impending hearse
Log and plank, in morbid love,
Did draft in rubble a flotsam verse
Entered the philistines above,
And artless as they were too terse:
The searing cries outdid first light;
Our wounded folk no monks to nurse,
Our mangled dead no priests to rite,
Ever children of the night.
IX
Who sought Epithilinon’s brave
Beneath each wizened, windswept grave?
Who paid tribute to her grandeur
Once her ruins mastered inure?
Yet, in a song, though in her fall
Epithil’non was built again.
Her halls and towers still stand tall,
The fallen blade revives the pen.
Thus, begins another reign.
Let no man speak of wars whence
No answer graced our call,
Let man remember gods thence
Gods, watchful of our fall;
Speak in silenced sighs, men,
Dead men hither sleep,
No flag here flails, amen, amen!
Who can ever beweep
Our brethren in the deep.
II
Frightened colours breached the sky,
The church bells played a dirge;
The bustling hills and vales so nigh
In crimson rage did merge,
Archers with crescents held high
Keen arrows fell like sin,
The portcullis in sorrow, shy
Interred our fathers in
The last grave of our kin.
III
Wailed the night in thunder blare;
The mangonels did come,
Lonely trumpets singed the air
When Earth ravished our home;
The eastern tower, wasting wear
For a trebuchet did bow,
Fallen stone and ballista bare
Broke its stony vow,
As the beadle mopped his brow.
IV
Mildly armoured, men at arms
Stormed the brazen fray,
Howled the castle’s cold alarms:
Ladder men up the brae!
Blazed in ire the fields and farms:
The winter’s yield was spent;
The cleric’s boon, the pastor’s charms
Burned with scorn’s base scent
To our false gods it went.
V
Rampart raised, our lofty lord
Rallied each lost knight’s lust,
Fain, one jilt his people’s sword
And relent a grain of dust;
Gentle came the primal horde
On voices that had known,
Not one had either hoped or heard
That we were not alone.
Our battle was our own.
VI
Braced the city’s mounted pride,
Known to all, all but friends;
Irate war mares, wild to ride
Hoofed the earth in hateful tens;
Rumbling drums hummed angst afar,
Crumbling corbels, flaming tar;
Lifetime’s art, the scope of breath
Whet this final craft of death
’Neath the slumber of an absent star.
VII
Dyed our paladins with rose
The castle gates with red repose,
Pikemen, then did chance a charge
Their lines remained unmoved at large,
Dancing banners paid their due
To one final, futile hue,
The battering ram, its hammer damned
The aging keep, in fervour slammed.
Yet, the gatehouse still held true.
VIII
Then like the shade’s impending hearse
Log and plank, in morbid love,
Did draft in rubble a flotsam verse
Entered the philistines above,
And artless as they were too terse:
The searing cries outdid first light;
Our wounded folk no monks to nurse,
Our mangled dead no priests to rite,
Ever children of the night.
IX
Who sought Epithilinon’s brave
Beneath each wizened, windswept grave?
Who paid tribute to her grandeur
Once her ruins mastered inure?
Yet, in a song, though in her fall
Epithil’non was built again.
Her halls and towers still stand tall,
The fallen blade revives the pen.
Thus, begins another reign.
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Everything You Borrowed
On Sunday afternoon,
after exiting the church,
you plucked the sun from the sky
and hid it in your palms
so that when I held your hands
they would no longer be cold.
When Monday night arrived
you snatched every single star
and used my tears to make
a necklace.
Tuesday's empty dawn shone
through the cracks of the door--
you stole the promise of what
could never be
and draped it around my shoulders.
After Wednesday's twilight passed,
you grabbed the clouds
and wove a tapestry of lies
that I hung on the walls
of my prison.
Thursday crept through us
on silent tiptoes,
waiting for us to take notice--
instead, we merely waited
for midnight to
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His father sluggishly pulled up a chair and printed sentences and fragments streamed from the printing compartment on his patchwork-junk face which Dolph had labored so fiercely to build and jumpstart over three years ago. Dolph reached for the re
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I stood with my wine glass and cigarette staring into the night as I heard the sound of fireworks, I wondered if the giant tree before me knew it was new years. There is nothing different from 11:59 to 12:00 yet we feel like it's a world away, because we judge many things in time, and we keep track of time in years.
I sat hugging a pillow, watching a 4 month old baby sleeping during his dream-feed and I wondered if the baby knew it was a boy. There is nothing different from a boy baby and a girl baby yet we feel like we have to define them because we judg
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Comments40
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shehrozeameen called me over here saying that I would love this poem. To be honest, I wouldn't say I love it. I actually feel a bit torn about it, because it's a good piece and an epic piece, but not a great piece.
What I enjoyed about this piece was that the tone is set perfectly with a precise vocabulary and powerful end rhymes. In general from what I have read of your poetry, this is your strength. The subject matter is rendered in vivid flashes of memory, which is exactly the way I think.
I have two reservations about the poem, though. I really felt the form left something to be desired. The main problem with a nine-line stanza is that the ninth line often feels either incredibly naked, or like a thought that overreaches itself, and I feel I saw those aspects in this piece. The sonnet petit, for instance, counterbalances this by using internal rhymes. Your ninth lines are not bad in themselves, but when read out loud in the form I felt no final cadence in the stanza.
The meter is ballad meter in an accentual fashion, which is more natural for the English language and allows you to flex your expressive diction, but the sound of it to me is rather disagreeable compared to the traditional ballad meter. Mixing those iambs and trochees leaves a rather muddled quality to the reading.
All in all, I think you accomplished what you set out to do with quite a degree of success, but in the end I have a sort of feeling in my stomach that it could have been still better.