PROLOGUE (dark druid arts)
I have sat down and tasted the words of the dead.
What do they taste of, the words of the dead?
They taste of the feathers of owls and the scent of old books.
They taste of domed silent libraries and the flow of a million minds.
They taste of iron and the flower of blood as it fills the mouth.
They taste of mud and rain and scythed grasses.
They taste of the forbidden, of the forgotten,
of the bitter and the everlasting.
They taste of answers and riddles and orifices.
I have sat down and watched them
As the old words make pictures,
As they attempt to communicate their forgotten truths
and the lying stories, and the power of breath and the power of song.
2
Let these sounds revolve slow:
The seed that sucks in water swells
Reaches out to worlds unseen
New airs moving, new sense, new scenes.
Becoming is leaving behind in darkness
That which feeds us still.
Moving out, moving out, peeling the familiar.
These fragments to be held without adjustment,
Without conclusion, as it were,
And if we were not shaping, as it were,
As if we knew somewhere deep already:
The old languages of the blood,
The old languages of potent dreaming.
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