In Lemuria

9 of Wands

The section on Atlantis is now 100% written. Lemuria, though, is dreamlike, and its inhabitants think in songs and verse and dance. I decided to do something different with Lemuria. Lemuria's section is written as a poem. Here's some of it.

VII.CHA.BE.CHA
(hills)
The monoliths soar in languid clusters dappling
The clay-soaked spiny hills, the herds of beasts
So old and vast they groan beneath
The weight of every embered dawn
And everything is song for we, and all is we,
And we conduct our quiet lives in song, in song
We hunt, in song we skin and tan and butcher
And apologise to the steaming blood, to beasts
Whose every part we use, whose hides we wear,
Whose tongues we use to comb our hair, whose teeth
We use to scar our bodies, decorate our wrists and
Necks, and jingle flatly as we walk. But the music
Of our jewelled bones is comfortless. Lemuria is dying.

(caern-cities)
And these caerns of stones upon the grounds
Of birth and gathering and death
The circles within circles crossing circles hollowed
From the weight of songs that hold the songs of mothers
Upon mothers upon mothers upon egg and sweat and bud,
Our homes and in our homes the Lhas of long before,
The Long Before, Inhabit too, hearing also,
Dwelling also, dwelling in the fabric of the rock
And if you place your palm upon the desert-yellow stone,
They sing to you, they sing to you the songs of Long Before
And how the time will come, and all too soon
for the extinction of our way. Lemuria is dying.