General:Lament for Pelinal

Book Information
Archived Link:	The Imperial Library
Writer(s):	Michael Kirkbride

Lament for Pelinal

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[Scholars disagree as to whether Morihaus' famous lament belongs in the fragmentary volumes of "The Song of Pelinal" or the bull-god's own so-called memoir, "The Adabal-a". Certainly it could belong to either, given that both of those texts celebrate the great affection between these immortals. History and indecision, however, have maneuvered the "Lament for Pelinal" into the relative obscurity of secondary sources associated with the Alessian Rebellion.]

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And the Mor bull flew from the Taking,
Where the alien kings had left Pelinal
Eight-wise – leaking, talking fool talk
To gnash treetops, sending southern leaves
Like his mother's rain – Sky Goddess Son
And suddenly it was a canvas of fall
For his horns were spirals of gore
Painting them doom-eyed

Thunder-color hit the river's edge,
Surprising it, distempered
This was jacklight lost to him
This was his landing-madness
Given hoof-point
And all the trajectory of took-away
Bent inward, storied to an end

"Pelinal-ada, again partitioned, what echo is
Unsatisfied still?
Whose dream is mumbling drunk?
I would break the compass of the map
And become it in better brass
And skin myself in country
So I could contain each piece of you
They hid, to conjure one precious
Return of your dumb laughter

"If I could be assured the rude stars
Of our continuing houses
Would not already be in fits of remake
Covetous, and yet stepping like soft love
That belongs outside the hands
Made fast at shrine, with candle-strides
So as not to wake the unsleeping
Smack of insect scruple

"Pelinal-ada, you lay in longest quiet,
Making it less easy to stay here between
The wave-fields of time,
Where forms adorn ideas rather
Than the insane else of heaven
Whose drapery now always, always
Patterns those aims to the regular mold

"Who set us to self-hubris, to burnt ribbons
Of kindred fugue?
Which tremble would do it worse?
If my own abeyance might stamp summer
Back into your pallid vanish,
Would I lift this hoof again, assigned?"