Two Songs
April is poetry month.
April is poetry month, so all my Saturday posts this month will be poetry. I’m beginning with two poems — songs, really — from my books: one from my first book, one from the novel currently being written. I’ve left in a bit of dialogue for context.
‘Tice’s Song’, from Empire’s Daughter. The two women — the narrator Lena and her friend Tice — are talking. Change is coming their community, change and danger.
Through the open window, I could see stars in the night sky, and the rising full moon, the last of summer. We sat in silence for a while. The lamplight flickered in the night breeze. Tice began to sing, unexpectedly, a slow, sorrowful song.
The swallows gather, summer passes,
The grapes hang dark and sweet;
Heavy are the vines,
Heavy is my heart,
Endless is the road beneath my feet.
The sun is setting, the moon is rising,
The night is long and sweet;
I am gone at dawn,
I am gone with day,
Endless is the road beneath my feet.
The cold is deeper, the winters longer,
Summer is short but sweet,
I will remember,
I’ll not forget you,
Endless is the road beneath my feet.
“Is that a song of your people?” I asked, after the last bittersweet note had faded.
“No,” she replied. “It is a song from Casilla, which is many miles east of Karst. I learned it from an old soldier, a general, who had his retirement farm half a day from our vineyard. He grew grapes and raised horses and collected songs. Jedd, his name was.”
‘Each Turning Year,’ from An Unwise Prince. The singer, Aífe, is sending a fairly unsubtle message to her friend Kirt, who is torn between an old, lost, love and a potential new one.
“I decided this evening should finish, not with a song about endings, but with one about beginnings,” Aífe said from the dais, her voice pitched to carry across the room. “This is a song I learned when I was very young, about the coming of spring after a long winter. Because spring does always come, even if we believe it won’t.” A run of notes, and then the first words:
Snow still lingers in the vale
Not all streams run clear,
Winter clings, but it must fail
As it does each turning year.
Listen, now, with ears and heart
To the singing nightingale:
The thaw will come, the ice depart,
Life freed from winter’s veil.
As with the land, so too the heart
Once broken, scarred and frail.
That keeps itself alone, apart,
Afraid, for love has failed.
Ice still holds this frightened heart,
Like a frozen stream curtailed,
Let winter go; let fear depart,
So sings this nightingale.
Aífe’s fingers stilled. To the silent room, she sang the last verse without accompaniment, her clear voice soaring to the rafters of the inn.
Snow still lingers in the vale
Not all streams run clear,
Winter clings, but it must fail
As it does each turning year.
She bowed, acknowledging the applause. Cenric, clapping loudly, glanced at Kirt. He wasn’t clapping. His eyes were on Aífe, but his expression wasn’t one of appreciation, or enjoyment, but of disbelief.
Like what you read? Donations for my local foodbank are gratefully received.
Find all my books at https://scarletferret.com/authors/marian-l-thorpe