Look out at the things you made. All things shining. (Poetry for Horizon and Adm. Biscuit) · 3:36am Jul 13th, 2016
News first. I am trying to write. My life has been tumultuous and unhappy. It has made writing not a very appetizing thing and I frankly haven't written a word in like, a week? Almost. But I'm trying tonight. I have a story idea with Luna that is 1/4 done that I think will restart my writing in general. Frankly, writing has gotten harder and harder for me since "Nothing is Constant".
You probably won't remember, but darf put together a collection of poetry awhile back. This was the post if you're curious. I am in it--twice! I wrote two poems of a proposed trilogy. One poem for each of the three pony tribes.
In Regards to Pegasi--A Primer
And now I've finished it.
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.
Finally.
I've also been thinking a lot about Admiral Biscuit's Silver Glow's Journal, which is fantastic and I strongly encourage y'all to read. The discussions are interesting, the story is good, all around its a wonderful daily experience. At one point the idea of a pony writing a poem about horses came up. Well, I'm not a pony, but I do write poems. I said it would be a fascinating thing to read and I kinda wanted to try. Biscuit said I ought to.
So I did.
A N T E A N
by Perique Blend, a Thestral from Old ColonySixteen 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.
Huh
That certainly is interesting. Now I cannot help but wonder what these would sound like with musical accompaniment...
4088085 The Earth Pony one I may fiddle with turning into an actual song.
That first reminds me of the 'secret wisdom' I learned in the Order of the Arrow as a youngster, and the second was... exquisite and thought-provoking.
That is beautiful and powerful. I don't know what more needs to be said.
s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/c2/ea/c0/c2eac0806f975509a18a37be6d53d8a8.jpg
4088134 Order of the Arrow? I'm curious--what is that?
4088137 fun fact--as far as I can tell, sixteen hands is a slightly tall destrier, so she's looking up at a warhorse sized animal. Which really puts this into perspective.
The Antean I got from Ponyfinder--they're a race of gentle giants, except they are like ten times taller than ponies and taller than humans.
Kinda tried to keep that scene where they first meet the horses in mind--the blankness, the unsettled feeling after the brief wonder, the ambivalent but strangely emotional greeting, happy that it is happy to see you but bewildered as to how feel about its existence.
Twas fun.
4088143
My God, man, draft horses are huge. I didn't really appreciate that until I went to the draft horse show--I'm six-four with my boots on, and some of them were big enough that my eyes were level with their rump maybe (I didn't get close enough to find out). And hooves the size of serving platters.
You nailed it perfectly.
If your poems are collectively a thousand words or more, you ought to publish them into their own story, if you haven't already.
4088138
It is the honour camper society for the Boy Scouts of America. You are voted in by your fellow boys in the troop you are from, and must display the virtues espoused by the Order: Brotherhood, Cheerfulness, and Service. Much of the lore is based on Delaware mythology.
Sometime you follow link and find very good thing to read.
This is such a time.
4088148 God they are tho. Giants. We made them giants. What is man indeed.
In hindsight, I wonder what being Silver and going back to Aric after all that would be like. Seeing humans ride and breed and work horses. It's such a strange idea.
4088149 Oh that is fantastic. : D
Beautiful!
4088162 Does she understand how completely we made horses what they are, I wonder? Probably not. That'd be an interesting chapter for the Journal.
Looking at the closest thing we have to pre-husbadry horses, Przewalski's horses, they are apparently 48-56 inches tall, which is just about or a little taller than some fan theories on Equestrian ponies, which seems like it'd make it even weirder for an Equestrian to find out just how much we've changed them.
4088214 Silver Glow kinda seems to know. As for Perique, the "writer" in "Antean" s/he may or may not.
But yes. It's... unsettling to try and imagine the situation reversed.
4088215 Interesting, I didn't see Silver as understanding our hand in it, but I might have forgotten that. I find I tend to not remember the daily small chapters as well. Time to re-read, I guess...what a disaster!
I think this means that Biscuit pretty well has to introduce a batpony to Silver Glow now.
4088226 from your lips to god's ears
It's not easy to find good poetry on this site. It's always a treat when I do. And this? This was a Sunday brunch dessert course. Thank you for it.
The Antean is absolutely amazing. Especially when read out loud. Wonderful work!
4088094
Took me a while to dig up the title out of my library, but I thought of Andrew Bird's Tenuousness while I was reading On Earth Ponies (A hymn):
4090243 I really enjoyed this. You've always good taste in tunes.
The first poem seems a bit Tolkeinesque to me, like some of the poems writen about the elves.
4090275
I feel the following would make for a good accompaniment if you ever do something like FluttershyxDiscord
Tishamingo - Devil's Love Song