{"sf1_id":1720152,"sf2_id":"GnDb3Ber","title":"Ragnarok - XX","author":"Rob MacWolf","words":1129,"posted_at":"2021-05-20T15:10:00.000Z","tags":["Epic","Iambic pentameter","Poetry","blank verse"],"url":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1720152-ragnarok-xx","original_url":"https://sofurry.com/s/GnDb3Ber","image_url":"https://cdn.sofurryfiles.com/submissions/thumbnails/7c/34/7c346139-1b01-47b3-9aee-e3c4e2510539","description":"#21 of Ragnarok\n\nShane's ghost wanders the city, invisible and intangible, and finds himself listening to man - seemingly rehearsing a lecture - at the edge of a cemetery.\nThe views of the Old Man are his own, and do not necessarily reflect those of the author.","content":"\"Man's voices have been silent for too long.\n\nHis songs are gone long unsung. Man has been\n\nLong disenchanted in this latter age.\n\nWhat songs are sung in triumph, and what hymn\n\nIs raised to god or gods above the stars?\n\nHow often is there heard the joyous shout\n\nPrismed to cadences like light to hue?\n\nWhen last did you hear, on the autumn breeze,\n\nA rustic dirge hummed idly? How long since\n\nYou heard the children chanting, in their play\n\nStumbling over laughter, like a young\n\nGlad-crazy king dancing upon his day\n\nOf victory before his god? Few, now,\n\nAre those who have heard song, real song. That grows\n\nLike thorn tree in the wild, uneven, rough,\n\nLacking in symmetry or balance, with\n\nA storm-cracked limb on this side, broken boughs\n\nOn that, and on the side facing the wind\n\nThe leaves all stunted, but so fierce alive\n\nThat yet it blooms even before the spring.\n\nNot song professional. Not song well-paid,\n\nNot song well-glamorized, not song that bars\n\nAll attending from aught else but itself,\n\nNot song rehearsed, recorded, or replayed.\n\nNot song perfected. Not song mummified.\n\nNot song ingenious. Not song very good.\n\nBut song alive and growing in the mouths\n\nOf man, who does not care if he sings well.\n\nWho sings because it makes work easier.\n\nWho sings because his living shames him not.\n\nWho sings because why shouldn't he? He has\n\nA tongue, and breath to drive it. Why not sing?\n\nWho knows that if to sing is good, than it\n\nIs better to sing ill than not at all,\n\nAnd though it may be said he cannot sing,\n\nIt never shall be said he did not sing.\n\nBut where now are sung men and women? Where\n\nIs the music of heaven? Where are songs\n\nTo wake the dead and sadden very stones?\n\nWhere are the piercing mournful haunted songs\n\nTo call the sailor to a gladsome death?\n\nWhere is the music of the marriage bed\n\nThat made it holy, drunk, everlasting?\n\nGone, gone. Gone silent is the tongue of man,\n\nFor silent is his heart. How can he sing\n\nWhen there is nothing more to sing about?\n\nWhat heroes has man now? What tragedies?\n\nWhat hopeless loves, what battles barely won?\n\nWhen tyrants yawn upon their easy beds\n\nAnd fear no death-knell but the doctor's bill,\n\nWhen grime and uselessness are lord of earth,\n\nWhat earthly power could move the soul to sing?\n\nIt was not always so. Once we believed\n\nIn so, so many things. And we were right.\n\nOnce our songs had power, so that to sing\n\nAnd to work wonders on the living earth\n\nWere one and selfsame act. Then was there much\n\nTo sing about: heroes, demons, and gods.\n\nHow the All-Father carved the earth out of\n\nThe corpse of his cold enemy. How he\n\nPlanted the World Tree, and it bore as fruit\n\nMore worlds than could be numbered, with the seed\n\nOf more world trees in each, and yet more worlds:\n\nTo ripen someday. How he lit the light,\n\nAnd how the thick darkness that comprehends\n\nIt not at all pursues it to devour,\n\nYet hates and curses what it hungers for.\n\nHow, written in the firey wine he drank,\n\nThe All-Father saw coming dread and doom,\n\nSlaughter for him and his, and for the worlds\n\nThat he had sown a neverending night\n\nAnd after that the nothingness. How he\n\nDefied the fates, and in despite of doom\n\nForetold and foreshadowed and foreordained,\n\nHe gathers warriors brave enough to stand\n\nUpon the bulwark of existence, watch\n\nThe salty toxic tide of nonbeing\n\nRise, pulled by eclipsed moon of its hatred,\n\nBreak on their bodies, turn its claws on them,\n\nAnd only draw their swords and roar at it\n\nThe same defiance. How out of every war\n\nHe takes the bravest, boldest, and the best.\n\nHow something in the darkness imitates,\n\nIn mockery takes cowards, traitors, the\n\nDishonorable dead, and steals corpses\n\nOut of the pyre-ships foundered in the sea,\n\nSoaked with salt brine and seared with frozen ash.\n\nHow on a ship built out of dead man's nails\n\nThe legions of the damned and mindless come\n\nTo make their master's war. How many dead\n\nWill die again upon their cruel swords.\n\nHow the twin of the cold colossus slain\n\nTo make the worlds and give the warmth of life\n\nTo frigid nonbeing, a searing touch\n\nWill lay upon the sky's back side, and will\n\nSplit through its dome even as the heroes\n\nAre locked in combat with his undead hordes,\n\nAnd fire will consume all. Then nothingness\n\nAgain will reign eternal undisturbed\n\nAs did it once before. Now there is meat\n\nMore tempting for the songsmith's teeth. When man\n\nBelieved such things, how could he help but sing?\n\nOh yes, they were rapacious, they were cruel.\n\nYes, they were violent barbarians.\n\nYes, they killed thousands to appease their greed.\n\nBut they sang, and were brave. And sometimes that\n\nIs enough. If the All-Father still sought\n\nFor soldiers in this little day and age,\n\nWould he find men who sang and died so well?\n\nWould he find any? Who can say? War has\n\nGrown cold, and enemies are strangers, killed\n\nAnd killing without making eye contact.\n\nThe weapons have grown wiser than the hand\n\nThat wields them, and can go to war themselves,\n\nWithout souls to arise heroically\n\nFrom death's embrace. The cunning weaponsmith\n\nIs in command. Not for nothing did those\n\nOld myths maintain the god of cunning was\n\nThe one to bring dark destiny at last:\n\nBehold what cunning has shaped war into!\n\nThe very image of world ending fire,\n\nWithout its courage, without its brave song.\n\nIf yet the All-Father lacked but one soul\n\nTo fill his ranks, where would he find him? Not\n\nUpon the battlefield, for battle has\n\nGrown barren, and bears no more fruit for him.\n\nNo, only in some ring of combat, where\n\nAt least one man in earnest fights, and wields\n\nNo weapon but his fists. If such should die,\n\nHe might be worthy to take that last place.\n\nAt least one looks his foeman in the eye\n\nAnd smirks, and thumbs his nose. If such should die,\n\nHe might awake in autumn woods in time\n\nTo join the last battle ere winter comes.\n\nIf by some stroke of treason or mischance,\n\nIf a dishonest fighter were to strike\n\nAfter the bell was rung, and guards were down,\n\nAnd his treasonous stroke went home enough\n\nTo kill a man he could not best, perhaps\n\nSuch a one would arise, the first to rise\n\nTo that cold world of war and glorious deeds\n\nSince ages when men still knew how to sing.\n\nSo do you understand at last now, Shane?\"\n\n  \n  \n\n","series":{"name":"Ragnarok","previous":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1719796-ragnarok-xix.json","next":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1720590-ragnarok-xxi.json"}}