I Am A Storyteller

Once there was a time, once upon a time, as it is told

We lived on myths, tread over buried ages all the days of old

In the firelight, the direction of the moon may not tell the time

Eager listener, a long hour is but a phrase of mine

Close your eyes and drift along as light grows dimmer now

Smaller bulbs of willow's nocturnal cover burn, in its arched bow

Where could I be? Looking over the distant open of a deep shade

The moon hangs, yet on closer look is another narrow way I face

It was well hidden by bricks of earthen color and cold

A small moon hangs in a characteristic midnight of what I've told

Quiet fantasy, unsung mystic, may have seemed empty where I stood

There suddenly light filled as fire, in a familiar crackling of wood

The mystic lord and magic knight kept a corridor closed

That would lead to a treasure room filled with gold and prose

But the treasure of gold was in the eye, the other in one's mind

A hallway glazed and tempered by furnace, but no words to find

 

I'll weave the journey in what I tell you now, a way back through halls

Open chambers full of time, following a written message on tunnel walls

But it is a story, a journal, a scroll of past events kept long by the sages

And murky shadows have harbored over these seamless ages

The scribes had written on high, now given to the buried deep

When fall fades the warm underground shades amble along asleep

In no direction they keep, in no awareness of time, wandering slow

Outside castle and downhill the countryside of long ago

But a legend speaks, and a touch stirs the air, many a tune is there

Carried on by trees fair and waves made by clearings of nowhere

Above paths of earthen way, you'll hear the chords, echoes seem faint

One chord low, one flows, and a third that crescendos with no restraint

 

Far up past clouds I sang with you, soft in the night's coldly lit moon

Heed that night's hidden grounds stay ever beyond the name of Lune

And the story speaks of solid bridges, rigid and old, collapsed and gone

They are present in shattered disarray, here is part of the tale I have drawn

What had happened that brings such an outcome to slow footsteps to a grind?

Attentive listener, 'twas the grottoes underway with no path any could find

It seems all is dead, passed on, and well outside that realm's frame

Disconnected distances unseen, they were outside the dark, aflame

 

Remember the ages deep beneath, the grip of war fleeting and tenuous

Ages erase and beyond the solid, the battle is sensed far more strenuous

The tale I bring now is of past glory won and peace that prophets tell

All your slightest hopes that fell, I've held them in such a deep well

 

Forgotten places and a memory of something I never heard played

Dimensions high or low, but it's always there, the memory had stayed

We all share the same realm, we reach back away, I speak and I regale

Of my path that I journeyed forth, and where my part is in the tale

If there was no doubt, and nothing dwindled to naught

The door of the unknown may drone on with no thought

But the iron holding fast, a sinister feeling keeps it all locked

An ancient willpower that dove into fire, where angels walked

Eternity vague, certainty pale, deep down once great realms sleep

Up from the depths, harbors their defeat, it's still a familiar keep

It takes form in a faraway edge that never connects, it may seem

Down from the darkness, a world upside, have you seen this dream?

If there is a demand to surrender secrets, the edge misleads our trust

Here and there I've slowed my steps to do whatever it is I must

The mystic and the magic knight have guarded a realm and its name

Their gaze sharp and crystal clear, whatever the ages may claim

 

Under the light of day hides the air of the past never gone

But the light finds a way through, reading the walls out yon

None can say it's too different now, the faded ages claim somehow

Abundant moments of centuries cleared, stones of gray lay now

From rooted willows and rolling shadows the corridor stands bare

Speaking that I'd come back, find this again, but time subdued the dare

The corridor still silent, in the murkiness of thought, well hidden

Absorbing darkness, a dull harbinger to echo something forbidden

If you go down this way to the ledge, brave listener, your senses keep

Shake off the feeling of fear, unease, doubt and pain, and of sleep

I speak of an iron door when it fell, an echo of emptiness continued

Loudly echoing until it too, faded to whispers misconstrued

Out on open lands the fog rolled in, the way beaded like light rain

The knight rode past in a hurried flash, of a time that time can contain

Torchlight reveals long settled stones and all thereon inscribed

Following the message written on tunnel walls, I have ere described

 

To reach out and the words may form and utter words in my mind

If nothing amiss befalls the twilight line of the horizon behind

Our voices bounce around and in answer, our questions as well

And walking outside the dark is a place I will bring a story to tell

 

The way away out and beyond, is to go down further and find dead space

Carrying clouds, hardly a visible path wound, navigating as if in a maze

Sounds muffled creep along, it was hard to find the buried secret gold

But it's the secret of old I hope to hold, given in words I'd told

 

And a place of song so clear, talking, singing softly close to my ear

Quiet tunnels deep and unheard, in a labyrinth unstirred, are near

The mystic telling tales with long pauses, with sighs, rivals mine

For the mystic lived in all those ages, while for elsewhere I'd pine

 

Under the light of star and moon, the hearth kept fires alight

As in a woven cocoon, wrapped away from the sinister night

But out on surface of lake, river and moss, flowed an ocean wind

Count it as a wish, like stars or oceans of fish, let a dream begin

 

In halls there blows a whisper of night, new moon out of our sight

In magic strings and hours in a glass, alas there would be far off light

And if one speaks the tale, the mystic foretold the casting of the spell

Let the strokes of a pen forever mark the wisdom of an uncertain farewell

That age and that realm began to fade almost as it came

The dread that was spoke in dreams but never said, had no name

So softly the story flowed, lofty the senses embraced the romance

In firelight and gatherings of folk, merriment and laughter and dance

But in a while I stood in a dim and long hall, against a wall I'd lean

Yet had I never halted, then never to see that which had passed unseen

Somewhere in a soft candlelight I was able to speak of what was before

Of what eluded the magic knight, what happened in past days of yore

A song in the east, moon in the west, and God's fire just the surface below

A keeper I was called to, from beyond the blue, out of what stories bestow

Great lands and desolate sands over a kingdom no script found redeeming

Perhaps an answer, curious listener, everything has meaning

The fire has gone to ember low, keep them aglow, and I sense no rain

I give you the moments again, and hours hence, all my heart can contain

Because I am a storyteller, I will say that the tale I spoke may seem to fray

Pieced together as I shall always be a storyteller, from so far away

 

 

©Iggy 1989

With notes added to the work dated in 1998/1999/2001