Bleak Heart (Vale poems)

Valerias has recently discovered that she's pregnant, and as a result has run off into Duskwood to do some serious thinking. The following is a poetic version of some of her thoughts.

Bleak Heart

The black moors made me, and from the reaches
where the heather twists unflowering, I was bred:
and a shadow lay over the earth.
A rich shadow like dusk, lovelier than the moon.

I begged for a life without hearth, without kin;
my bloodied heart, still-beating organ, I left
on a slab of grey stone – a sacrifice to the empty sky.
A solitary curlew winged overhead, leaving me barren.

But how could I be otherwise than barren, than bereft;
I who wear the peat-bogs as a gown,
whose eyes are sharp flint, hidden beneath the weeds,
whose laughter conjures up the rolling mists?

How could I bear life into this wasteland-
into the gnarled, rotting, devastating grandeur
of the black rivers that run in my blood-
where there is no sound but the wailing of the past?

As I did with my Rohwyn-thread, I think I'll just keep all my poetry to do with Vale here. The following is inspired by Vale's recent visit to the south seas in the company of Garthen Raelas, and covers some of her ongoing struggles and desires.

In the Desert of Reckoning

I am of the dry dust,
the cracked and parched earth where no water flows from rock
where even molten gold turns brittle.
The aloes on my skin are borrowed from verdant jungles I have never seen
and the spices that enchant my lips, I plucked
from the wreckage of a thousand splintered ships.

My body is a winding riverbed, long empty,
my shoulderblades half-buried bones across which scorpions scuttle.
Thunder trembles in the distance, but there is never any rain.
This is the desert of reckoning,
the starved ribs beneath the illusion of health,
the endless thirst behind a fevered and wavering mirage.

And yet there was a voice;
not the desiccating lash of a sandstorm, nor the hollow glare of the sun
but a zephyr from the sea that whispered of life–
and my tongue and throat of clay longed suddenly to form the words
'Oh sing to me, please stay and sing to me,
for I am not yet ready to die.'

I'm experimenting a lil' bit with this one. It's a theoretical poem, regarding how Vale might end up if she continues on living the way she is and pushing everyone away.

Last Spark

She lit a cigarette
on the stove -
the depths of midwinter and
her feet had turned to stone

unlike all the other fragile orchids who said
screw this, mate,
and slumped away to hibernate
among the icebergs.

There was so much moonlight
reflecting everything -
the linoleum
and her forty-year-old childlike face

And then it was dark
except for that cigarette end
glowing like a volcano
in a corpse's hand.

The 'you' being spoken to in this one is Vale; the speaker is just some random outside voice. The poem does twist around a lot so, hrm, couple of explanations: the stone that burns her, the weight around her neck, is referring to the stuff that haunts her from the past; her family, her blood, her regrets. The mountain climbing metaphor is both her struggle to get on with life, and her struggle for freedom from the past.

The Weight of Remembering

The stone around your neck was always there,
you said, as you you rolled it between your fingers,
smooth as glass and bright as the eye of the sun.

You bore so many dreams
one for every step, every twist of the craggy path;
your sleep was damned by voices on the wind
while the pebble became a coal, hot and white
against your breast.

We all have a weight to carry, you said,
even as you began to burn
your skin blackening and your heart beating
frantically, like the wings of a caged swan.

I still see you sometimes, climbing toward the snows,
your arms open to embrace whatever waits
atop those desolate peaks.

A few of Vale's thoughts on Garthen Raelas, in light of their travels together (travels both literal and metaphorical):

The Way

In the dry times, when it was summer,
I watched a snake–
it wound its way through the tiresome dust,
scales flecked
with the dark coolness of moss
against the white glare
of the indifferent sands.

Its persistent journey, undulating
over dune after cliff,
reminds me of yours:

of the way that sometimes
you lift a finger to see which way
the wind is blowing.
It's a north wind, and maybe it's late November,
but still you pull on your jacket
with those stubborn hands.

Not about Valerias solely, but about her family, the Caans - the feared and hated clan of Duskwood murders and thieves.

Caan

The undergrowth skitters
with the feet of frightened children.
Hollow eyes gleam behind the trunks of black ashes -
hands reach out to claw and snatch
from creeping vines and nettles.

Here dwell the guardians,
the viper's brood –
dark tangles, pale hands:
clan of scars and burns and devils.

I wouldn't walk that way, traveller.
There are no mere passers-by in those parts –
everything they touch is rent and twisted.
Disappears, in fact,
into the rank and rotting shadows of their haunts.

Grrr good titles are difficult. But this snip of a poem is again about Vale struggling through her metaphorical climb. She has a (very) little more hope than she used to, though, thanks to the birth of her son Adrian and to a certain scruffy mage.

The Summit

Keep walking, you told me one morning
when the pine woods rose up like a storm around us
and there was no sound but the rustling of the past.

A little farther now, you said to me
when the snows drifted 'round like a cast-off shawl
and my feet were numb, and the light nearly gone.

'Your smile is made for flight,' you said, gripping my wrist
and hauling me up the last face of broken sandstone.

And with that last step, I fell on my knees beside you–
neither of us knowing any words–
and the valley unfurled before us like the petals of a cactus rose.