> Slowly Drifting, or The Lost Verses of Perique Blend > by Cynewulf > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Found Things > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- It was just an envelope. If it hadn't been for Spike, she wouldn't have seen it. If she'd not seen it, Twilight would never have opened it and she would never have asked any of the questions she asked. She might not have seen the things she saw or spoke the words she spoke. Or maybe she would have. The world and its workings are opaque and hard to make out, loathe as ponies and others are to admit. But it was just an envelope sitting right outside the palace. Spike brought that first one to her along with all of the other letters and reports and the new books she'd acquired over the weekend. And there it had laid, deposited on her desk under a mountain of verbosity and mundanity, until Twilight stumbled upon it at last. No name, no date, no address. She asked Spike about it. They both knew nothing. In the end, shrugging, Twilight Sparkle opened that letter, and she read. > Introduction > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- There comes a time when Talk about how I got here? Life must be lived forward but experienced back List: --Talk about the first morning? --Reflection? --The cosmology? find out native word --On Writing? --Should I start with poems? Look. I don't know how to start this. It's not a good beginning for a writer and I'm well aware of that. Why should you read this little book of poems when I apparently can't even put together a few sentences to describe what it is you're holding? I can hear you asking it even now. I write you from my new home, dug by a friend into the side of cliff face. It is warm as such things can be, drafty at times but not unbearably so, and overlooks a great lake. It truly is a better home than the last few months have led me to expect. Shipwrecked as I was, I had come to see nothing in my future but a kind of awkward eternal vagrancy. But I have a bed now, and slightly primitive wood floors. I even have candles and a rough table I built myself. All this to say, that I'm struggling to find a way to express what this volume in such a way as to impart any of what it actually means to me, and what it's already done. I could describe how its existence bouyed my spirit in terrible times. I could mention how I risked death more than once so as not to be separated from the pack that held my bundled poems and maps. I could tell you about scrawling these words hiding under trucks and waiting in ditches. I had nightmares after the Antean that the words helped to soothe. Time has washed over me and only this final tie to my former life kept me sane, kept me who I am. That's the best I can do. I can write when I need to, and when I want to. The story, the poem--the words on the page are a dream and once I wake from the dream I'm clueless. Right now, I'm awake, and all to self-aware, and so I stumble all over myself. Maybe one day, all of it will be put together but I doubt it. Have you ever looked at a page and wondered how long it took to write that page? No doubt you've assumed all of this page was written at one time. But already I've stretched it all out over a few years. I return over and over again to this pile of prose and verse and poke at it. I'll grow obsessed, working feverishly. Editing, writing new material, changing names and details... And then eventually, slowly, inevitably, I give up. I go back to my life in the river reeds and the creek beds. The book is too big. Life is fleeting before the longevity of art, even shoddy attempts like my own. How many times can you say--this should be finished. I should write this--before you grow to hate the taste of those words in your mouth like curdled milk? How long can you hold a story or a feeling before it wilts and rots and infects you? Can you cradle words like a foal asleep at last and expect of them timidity? Could you bind the Antean? And could you with time and world enough cut language down to size? It's thoughts like these, aimless, formless, frustrating, bleary-eyed--let's dispense with all that. The truth is that its thoughts like these, cynical at best, that keep me up at night. Thoughts, honest ones and forthright ones, concerning my absence from Equestria. Concerning my farm and my agent and the shop down the road in the village. How long did it take for the back entrance watchpony to notice I was gone? It's sad to realize that only my regulars, old stallions with bitter tongues and sad eyes, knew I was gone. At some point only they knew and nopony else. I had no wife or husband, no darling foal. I was myself alone, a family unto myself, an island in a sea of equinity. And now, ironically, fittingly, I am this way forever. Eight years. Wow, I really got sidetracked there, didn't I? This is more of a log than an introduction. The snow? The snow can bite my ass. Wish I was worth a damn at weatherworking. But it makes for good writing, strange enough. The world rarely makes for bad writing. When we write foul or untrue things I find the world was working against me more than not. Perhaps that's bias. Probably is. Perception is flawed fundamentally. Sometimes I wonder how arrogant it must be to assume any of what I see is accurate. Even on the verge of sleep I finish this, writing a decade in exile. This was to be my introduction and after some thought, it is a good one. I was not structured or organized. I postured as much as I wilted in apathy. I tried but did not always try. I was lonely. The world was often dark and often cold and always dangerous. My call for help never made it. This is what I lived as I wrote. And it's all you need to know. This wasn't for you. I think it was for me. ~Perique Blend > Book I.1-3 > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- On Earth Ponies (A Hymn) The works and the days they are Done with, the long stretch of Agrarian years they are Done with all, the call of the trees is Done with, and accomplished the Apple demands—family and the Weight of duty. Oh, but the Earth was ever mine— Ever faithful ever true. Ponies of the earth, we the movers Of the grain, who tend the vineyards Of the Grapes, who are the growers Of Apples— Who love the Good Earth. Oh, but the Earth was ever mine— Ever faithful ever true. No flyer of clouds am I, nor my Ponies those who build pillars Of cloud—These hooves built for Hard things are, built for the Slow things are to guard and for Living things are the hooves of The Ponies I come from meant. Oh, but the Earth was ever mine— Ever faithful ever true. And I have no magic because I need None, need no wings, need no Wine of heady sort to grace tongue And no mysteries in runes. I have World enough, and time, And commands to ask not of Tomorrow But only to enjoy the lilies of the Field Which is to say That the love of Earth is mine and The World is enough. On Pegasi—A Primer When you ride the lightning, it doubles back and Without fail, you’ll lose it. Without fail, Promise you with all my heart, you’ll Get that aching. The Aching, you’ll think, with a big proper Capital A to make it all special. There’ll be Lightning in your brain and lightning in your heart and Lightning in your eyes. Son, When it crashes, keep your wings steady and Your eyes rolling all about. You’ll want to play And revel and love in the storm, want to Live, but it’s not time to live, it’s time to work and All that entails and means. It’s like preening, when a pretty mare wants you, when You win—that’s what a storm’s like, son. It’s all sound And fury, noise and preparation. Your throat closes up, Your eyes don’t wanna stay still, and your hooves shake in midair And that is okay It’s okay, though the wind tear and the rain pour and The lightning yell its rage at you, It’s all okay. World needs a few strong storms now and then And I guess that means you too. Concerning Unicorns, a Lesson My son, my apprentice: Listen Closely, keep your eyes straight And your mind clear. Open your heart And keep your horn lit--keep those Orbs balanced in harmony with Themselves and the Song-spun Universe. Now-- I'm going to tell you what it all means Surely you've felt it Seen it Creeping at the corners, shy before Your questing, searching eye. Our tribe guided the sun In its glory And the moon In its splendor And we counted the stars and knew them Each by name. Yet that does not Satisfy. Does it? Our brothers understood the earth And our sisters understood the sky But what did we understand? What was there apart from The Good Earth and the Joyful Sky? You've seen glimpses of what we Knew in your studies already, Lifting training weights, lighting up Rooms, adjusting heat and cold, Reading in silent vaults. You've glimpsed the recursive, spiraling Of existence like the grooves in your horn. Beneath the recursion "there lies an inviolate layer" So also beneath our feet and above our horns There too is an inviolate Mystery. Do not lose your focus, For we know the Mystery now. So eager for knowledge and so Eager for something to show our brothers And our sisters, we chased it and chased it-- Finally we too would return with Something of worth and they would Love us and we would be worthy Of their love. We locked ourselves in high towers And in endless libraries, We searched the vast darkness of space And we delved into the darkness In the corners of our hearts, And with time we became cold. Our desperate love grew cancerous Until it became disdain for companions And the revels of our former friends. (We were cold just fine in our Finery, before ever the Windigo!) That's good for now. Put your Tools of practice away. Come down And eat. The Mystery? If you insist. In all of our grasping, we failed to see That all alone beneath all things In decency and order there beat Love At the heart of all magic worth casting. When you weave arcane energy You weave your heart-strands, You weave your own world-love And make of it a light for your friends in the dark. We thought the answer was to Know. We never needed to know. Our brothers and sisters loved us All along. A Pegasus to fight for me And an earth pony to sing for me And tell yourself: I will repay their love with my own. Power, mystery, lore, philosophy, riches And yet. It is the greatest of these. > Book III.5 "A N T E A N" > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- A N T E A N Sixteen hands high he is, three of me or more This giant like a tree is planted, solitary in the grass, Does his size command--it must mean Something, it must be some sign. Sixteen hands high he is His head must hold up the skies. What could I say him that will explain him? Shall I tell you that the earth beneath this giant quakes? Or That he pulls a plow taller than Celestia and twice as powerful, shall I Tell you this stallion who holds up the sky with his gentle head is beyond me in scope Or that in his eyes the universe is tilted by perspective, that he sees from above what Cannot be seen from below that he stands between myself on the wing and my sister Upon the ground? I can't tell you that. Sixteen hands high he is, three of me or more and his gaze unsettles me. You'll think of that height and think of Celestia shining like the dawn over the mountain And I'll think of the moonlight spilling over the tip of Ghastly Gorge outside my door on the rocky floor But the Antean is neither of these things. He stands colossal and singular but his singularity is Simple and simplistic, it does not draw the eye or the mind or the heart through Granduer or glory or song or laughter but In that it is so utterly starkly Blank. Not mindless but blank, as he grazes eyes large and seeing all they see still nothing they are blank As a parchment untouched is blank before me deep in the Colony in the Gorge in my cavern on my desk In the darkness in the city where no wax candle lives where no day pony sees but feels and whispers-- That is what I saw in the giant's eyes. And then I shrank, terrified. Is this what I am, mindless and grazing, seeing all yet seeing nothing, knowing nothing, being Nothing, am I beneath a thin veneer like this giant of Earth this Antean So like the stories and songs of the West yet so horribly alien? Is this the promised end is this is this And yet. Gently lives the Antean in the sunny vale, trotting to the crude fence of wood And thrusting his great nose down at me in greeting wordless yet obvious And in my horror I did not know what to do so I returned that greeting And found That he was kind yet blank yet kind. And then, when he had satisfied his curiosity, he left. The Antean was the sea and the sea Is not troubled. But I have never been much of a sailor. I think perhaps Sometimes, when I worry, that the worry is the difference. Sixteen hands high he is and holding up the sky, There are worse things beneath heaven's vault than giants.