Ballad of the Wolf-Rider
My small contribution to a good piece of anime by Hayao Miyazaki & his Studio. The form doesn't follow the original form of the old ballad, but more of the freestyle of modern poetry, especially Dylan Thomas, which I was reading before I wrote this down. It's bloody long because I get carried away. Appreciate any reviews…(grins)…
From rain in the hills fleeced in cloud, the sprinting of mountain streams, pacing the men that sweep the plains, axes like brooms, The mother of nature shrieks in woe: the fog where spirit mourns spirit, fires Yet such men flee from the shadows But the price of blood is not paid in death: for mercy bears its solitary fruit: A thousand moons would pass since, and in shame lay the lords of the beasts: Rise, rise the reign of a great warrior! For she has no fear of sword or axe; For her foes are men whose pride breaks She does battle as a dance without steps her brothers are powerless to save, Wrath is the thread of her foe's shawl; For the wolf-princess and mistress of the stone heart till the coming of a prince seeking peace But until the day the Forest Spirit heals man, stalking the ledges mounted high in mist Partaker of the sadness, she and her brothers And as the gates of the moon open, Human in heart, soul and face,
to forest crawling in the valley below;
from the shroud swimming over ancient towns
littered on the stubborn slopes;
the lunge of every bitten cliff;
to the vales of ash and aspen, calling
with each cough of the wind:
dustpans over timber, iron, gold, meat -
till the plains are cleaned, the mortal wounds
over woods like scars and graffiti.
streams run umbilical with her blood -
the miscarriage of creation – no other foes,
but the rebellion of her sons,
and funerals with wreaths laid in hate;
the lament echoes from distant shires,
as men stoke malice in molten flames.
when the gods of nature are loosed,
seeking recompensation, and the hunters
surrender a child at the jaws of the wolf.
the wolf-god's hand is stayed,
a child lives on a beast's breath
till revenge's debt is paid –
the human-child of the wolf-god!
Denied to the roots of her blood;
withered from all promise of truce.
and the kodama would humbly note
the Night-Walker's goings-out and in,
while clouds would blow the rains from their throats,
disgraced by man and the demon's hand,
over a forest left to bleed,
carcass of a human hinterland.
The leader of creatures of hooves –
vengeance falls in the swipe of her spear –
judgment rides on the back of a wolf!
and wears the mask of a ghost's stealth,
passing over the towns, and on her back
rides the angel of death.
mountains; their greed a curse
cast in iron – the smoke of their dwelling place –
like the spoils from a furnace.
blind as her humanity slips and falls
from the holds of traps
laid treeless within stone walls
from the eye of her human enemy:
the mistress with the wooden stake
which breathes iron that brings gods to their knees.
man and forest torn in war,
and the stumps of trees unstitched, spoiled
as the souls of men unaccounted for.
press the trigger of a private feud:
no word can bid their hate thence depart,
or their madness remove,
and a cure of his accursed self
he cannot control. Friend of man and beasts,
the arch of his bow and the trot of his elk.
she remains princess of wolves and blades,
protector of the forest lands,
guerilla with the devil's face,
and the mountains embracing the sky,
whose valleys are the darkest sewers of grief
and pain as the forest drains of life.
are the shadows of a lost cause –
no heart for her kind or any other –
fading from the day which all life draws.
the Night-Walker treads over his realms of pain,
while the howls of wolves utter unbroken:
the princess rides out on a wolf's mane!
but warrior and rider by name. (22.11)