The Arboretum
or the Book of Sacred Trees


~I~

Twenty times    ten thousand nights
were yet to come    before Ilion’s fall
when the twilight-eyed    paced the ground
from Aryan Land    of his native Steppes
to wild Iberia    by Ocean’s grip
through western forest    and frozen glade
to subdue the world    beneath his boots
of oxen hide.    These, our memories,
still sing of him.    So Proficient Father,
you Horned One,    regale us now
with clear unimpeded,    prodigious sight.
May unknown priestesses,    now unborn,
like ravens sing    these words I write.

‘Neath locks of    nightsbelly hair,
the twilight-eyed,    Aryan son,
gazed on woods    of the Horned One,
incomplete thoughts    in wary mind.
The trees; pines,    hawthorns, elms,
like foreign pillars    or totems of gods
known to ancient,    inscrutable minds,
reminded Ironraven    of why he’d left.
He’d headed,    with abandon, west
to the wilds beyond    the River Rhine –
as later Germans    would invoke it –
the boundary-line    of Aryan lands.
He would make    the world his home.

It was a world    like a winter flower,
losing petals    before a watchful eye,
an hour-blossom –    something ephemeral;
as the vain called    the world “Arya”
the world was coming    to an empire’s end.
Ironraven only wanted –   wanted to remember
the cosmos before    that name was spoken.
Primordial trees,    older than gods
(the younger generations)    spoke unerringly
of that ancient universal,    the pre-human infinity,
as Ironraven’s steed    set the world
to spin beneath    those drumming hooves
in the forest called    No More Regrets.

No tongue had called    the land “Iberia”
or “Hispania” yet;    the men of the soil
only knew names    of fragmentary tribes
with unrelated tongues    and competing gods.
Though now it is merely    “the Old World,”
this was the frontier    of knowing then.
Then there was magic still,    unknown gods,
virgin forests    and veiling mountains,
indigenous tribes    of immortal occupancy
and legends that outgrew    shadows of truth.
The Aryan son flew    far from kings
whose names would perish    with dead Arya.

It was not easy –   the grey warrior
had broken the boundary    with astounding force
to escape Arya’s    monster jaws.
Beyond the Rhine    they even speak of it,
like children speak    of heroes or beasts.
The old witchdoctor    of the western plateaus
had Aryan coins    on his fetish staff.
The Werewolves    of splendorous Arya
brought war west    to conquer them
in ages past    when the kings wore gold
and it was still honor    to serve the Cult.
The Wolfgod    and the horse alike
were signs of terror    unto the Pyrenees.

Old warriors once    conquered trading cities
by their horse’s reins,    seizing the thrones
set up by others.    It was the horse
and the ethic of the Wolf ,  both Steppe-born,
good old Aryan     traditions and rites,
that took Kaneš,    brought the Hellenes,
conquered the Rhine    and the Indus people.
Under imposed peace    the people prayed to Dyeus,
the Thunder-Warrior.    But the shadow of success
is the distance of fall     of the rider from horse.
The wilting flower    was the lightning bolt
fading wistfully away    in the waxing night
as Ironraven rode    the world, his home.

Before the Pyrenees,    north, by the coast,
he’d met the shaman    who clumsily spoke
of the terror he foretold    in the fountain cave.
The holy man’s    fire shot up sparks,
and star-shaped    bronze tokens
rattled on his staff    as he fearfully spoke.
The old witchdoctor    used the tongue
of Arya with awkward,    backwards mastery,
but he was understood    well by Ironraven.
Calmthirst, his sword,    would avenge this evil
for the lives of girls    raped and killed by
a monster so easily    recognized by his deeds,
a disease borne    in Aryan blood.

He rose to his feet    with a final nod
and went to the forest    to bind a torch.
The night-birds    of the nameless Girl
sang and shifted    in ancient trees.
The twilight-eyed    Aryan son
beneath the shimmering    sky’s vast herd,
beneath attendant Venus    and Silver Queen,
lit his swathed wand    and brandished sword
to face the faceless    thing that Arya left
when her steeds withdrew   from failing wars.
For in the cave he met    what he foreknew
in the tribesman’s words,    the aging form
of an Aryan soldier,    gone mad alone.

Calmthirst dispatched    the monster well;
the sword of Ironraven,    meteor-stone,
had flown as a falcon    stealing hares
in an open field.    The Wolf Soldier
fell without fame;    the immortal glory
remained Ironraven’s,    for victory smiled
on Arya’s son,    and human-pressed wine
watered the soil    of Earth’s bowels.
The man was a Teuton,    of the Rhineland tribes,
a western people    to submit to Arya.
Those fought fiercely    at first, preventing
all subjugation from the Steppe.  But the Teuton knee
which did not bow    soon marched for Dyeus.

~ II ~

So the twilight-eyed    Aryan son
crossed the forests    of endless tribes
in unnamed Iberia.    He made himself free
of the range of Wolves    with his sword at side.
Sappy pines,    nearly innumerable,
were at his fleet    horse’s flanks
when he noticed the rings    in the rough bark.
“These have to be,”    he said aloud,
“a human work,    by knives and tools.”
Ironraven slowed    his horse to look;
the carvings in the trees    were ubiquitous around
the hoof-tamed trail    his horse was taking.
Men and things    were in those rings.

“I am curious,”    he said to no one,
“what foreign fables    these pictures show.”
He watched them pass    with measured awe.
At first mere fantasies    were all he found –
warriors and demons    unknown to Arya.
Some giant hero,    perhaps the Horned One,
comes to birth    in a cosmic blossom
that rose from the sea.    By the next image,
his offspring are born,    waging mighty wars
for the cryptic boons    the Horned One left.
More passed by.    Ironraven took in
pictorial histories     that none could believe.
Cities and societies    assembled and fell.

A hero fords    a heaven-sent flood,
and recognition came    to Ironraven’s mind.
The epic poems    of Aryan seers
continued to recall    the sailing wine-maker
whose three sons    were the first kings
of Arya and Shinar    and exotic Egypt,
and in the next frame    he saw these too,
walking the Earth    to found the empires
that would recall their fame    in their royal courts.
“This is incredible,”    the twilight-eyed
remarked quietly.    “These carvings recall
with inhuman detail    the history of the world!”
He admired, amazed,    his world, his home.

He saw Arya    arise from the Steppe,
sweeping across    the foreign lands.
The warhorse led    the Wolfgod’s legion
to conquer the realms   recalled in compositions
of Arya’s poets,    and warriors’ lives
were retold consistently,    to immortal glory.
He saw Arya    turn and decline
as heroes’ spirits    abandoned the lands
they had named    after their own hearts.
The kings lost control    of the people’s lives;
they began to wander    and a lone westerner
rode out across    the River Rhine.
The rider crossed   the world alone.

In the carved-out ring    on that ancient tree,
stiff Ironraven stopped    his cautious gaze.
He stayed his horse    and touched his iron sword.
His twilight eyes    searched the trees and shadows
for a sign to explain    the demonic treachery
against all reason:    Ironraven saw himself
in the round carving    on that sacred pine.
Frantic, he searched    the next ring, and the next;
he found only puzzle    upon puzzle upon mystery.
Baffled, the rider saw    Achilles kill Hector
and a wooden horse    desolate Aryan Troy.
He saw the ships leave    and wise Odysseus
get lost by the wrath    of Apam Napots.

He saw Aeneas escape    the falling city
to set Roman society   upon the Italian Tiber.
It was all meaningless    to Ironraven’s eyes –
mere people and things    mistakable for occurrences
already done and passed;    mere useless heroes
and superfluous cities    that would assemble and fall
just like endless others    since creation’s birth
from the cosmic blossom    of the Horned One.
Pines and centuries passed    by the horse’s flanks,
while white ravens    like women sang.
Ironraven watched the wrath    of Teuton sons
spill across the Rhine    to infect the lands
and an immeasurable war    laid waste to history.

When many trees passed,   the pictured people
became small and gray    and there were no heroes.
The last pines showed    the things crawling away
in shame to hide    in pyramids and cubes.
Finally, there came a tree    at the end of the forest,
in Ironraven’s way,    its evil image
maliciously facing him.   It held a carving
he couldn’t comprehend;    he was disturbed
by the inhuman artwork    he encountered before him.
A plain of solid,    gray shapes,
sparse and regular –    spires and cylinders,
orbs and cubes –    was all it showed.
He could make    nothing of it.

~ III ~

Beyond the forest    the twilight-eyed
Aryan son    found a grassy plain
at the foot of imposing,    godly mountains,
inhabited by a curious,    backward tribe
that painted themselves    with sulfuric mud,
a color reminiscent    of mustard flowers.
They talked to him,    but he couldn’t understand;
he talked to them,    and they seemed horrified.
The salty smell    of an unseen sea
wafted in the air    across the purple mountains.
The yellow people    chattered like birds
or rattling wheels;    their red hair
resembled flames,    their eyes, oceans.

Ironraven called them    “Sparrowtongues.”
Their gangly chief,    dusted in saffron,
kept cheetahs as pets    and hunted cocks.
They mistrusted Ironraven    immediately and wholly
and their blue eyes,    with naïve wonder
and inclement suspicion,     never left him.
The wary and shy    Sparrow girls,
even after several weeks    with the yellow tribe,
would not near him    like the eastern girls
who knew hospitality    for foreign guests.
They never laughed   or sang for him.
He was something    unclean and dangerous
for being alien    to their world and home.

Aryan poets taught    that dreaded Dyeus had
drowned the Earth    for its inhospitality.
The worldwide flood    of the wine-sailor
must never have touched    the yellow-skins,
Ironraven reflected.    Sitting by a fire,
he had a side alone    on his granite seat
while Sparrow people    piled man on man
across the flames    to keep away.
They roasted fowl    but fed him radishes;
he was unwelcome    at the sacred meal.
“I cannot stay here,”    he said to himself.
Ironraven was close    to the farthest reaches
of all there was –    the Gates of the World.

The twilight-eyed    made hand signs
to inquire the nature    of things beyond
the purple mountains    of the setting sun.
The life drained fast    from the chief’s body
and faint women    left the crowd, afraid.
The angry chief,    a gangly man,
led Ironraven by arm    across the village
in a fit of haste    to see the mortuary
that Sparrowtongues    used for corpses.
He watched the chief    making hand signs.
“Right, mŗtōs,”    he said: “dead.”
And the yellow chief    was saying a word
like a raven would:    “kha, kha!”

Then the gangly chief    brought Ironraven
by arm to a hill    above their huts.
He watched the chief    making hand signs,
a hand to one end,    a hand to the other,
far end of town.    Ironraven understood.
“Right, weīks,”    he said: “town.”
The yellow chief    pronounced a word
like a ground-bird might:    “deez, deez!”
Ironraven put the two    words together now
as the Sparrowtongue,    impatient, glared.
“City of the Dead,”    he said, in wonder.
The chief put a finger    on his azure feather,
ensign of royalty,    and said only, “Pana.”

~ IV~

Ironraven left at dawn    for the mountain mist
before the Sparrow chief    could stop his steps.
The supernatural    haze was solid
no matter how high    Ironraven ascended.
Mixed up in white,    mysteriously waxing
until nothing else    remained clear,
he trudged up slopes,    rocks crumbling
beneath his boots    of oxen hide.
Somewhere unknown    songbirds sang,
recalling incantations    of the Sparrow chief
so much that Ironraven    mulled in wonder
whether the chief    followed behind in
the misty whatever,    so expansive and white.

His muddy ascent    took most of the morning;
his calf muscles burned    with thorough fatigue.
At noon a bluebird    emerged from nothing
and fluttered confused    in Ironraven’s face
before vanishing entirely   in the mountain mist.
His boots began    to point downward
instead of up    but the mist remained
as thick as water    on the mountain’s face.
Gravity his compass,    the Aryan exile
came down the mount    with rolling stones
and washed-out dust    that echoed throughout
the unseen world    like dead man’s deeds.
Ironraven wandered    the world alone.

No family, no home,    no honor of aristocracy,
he had nothing to bind    him to society, the city,
the assembly of creatures    called humans who built
monuments and memories    that meant nothing to gods,
to nature, to being,    but he wandered free,
alone and afar without    a tinge of longing
for his native Steppes;    only a bit of sorrow,
emptiness, or loneliness…    The price of civilization,
the cost of the polis:    alienation and death.
Ironraven, stubborn –    hopeful – hiked on
as the mountain mist    withdrew its veil
slowly but surely    as azure skies
appeared ‘tween clouds    that yielded themselves
to the steadfast will    of the outcast man.

The mystery unfolded    like so many doors
to show the figures,    the feared shapes –
rods and spires,    cubes and spheres –
inhumanly perfect    slabs of gray slate
arranged as a city,    assembled so straight,
so errorless, featureless,    terrible and feared,
foreign and strange.    The City of the Dead
expanded before him    with no regard for land
or sea or hill.    The city filled earth
and water indifferently;    buildings marched into sea
as if it were no matter,    so purely geometric,
consuming and devouring,    growing like fungus
across the hopeless    world, its home.

Ironraven stopped.    The Dreaded City
stayed his steps    with god-sent terror.
The inconceivable thing    he saw in the tree
was before him now,    unavoidable, evil.
Imaginations of the gray,    pitiful things
of the ring-shaped carvings    hiding in the solids
caused him to shudder,    like spiders in nests,
or aborted fetuses,    unforgivably dead,
contorted unnaturally    in canopic jars.
If the cosmic blossom    congealed or birthed,
or assembled, this city,    this abomination of man,
the elder gods should    be condemned to death.
The world, corrupted,    could rot alone!

“This is the end,”    he said, a sigh.
The city, perhaps    of a previous cycle,
left over in secret    from even older times,
when the sea was not here    and mountains unformed,
the end of an identical,    lost aeon,
reminded Ironraven    of the pre-Aryan infinity
where all cities fall,    even this one,
the last one,    leading to a new one,
born of new heroes,    recalled in compositions
of new lines of poets,    their esteemed glory
restoring the cosmos    again and again
only for certain death    to wipe them away
in the eternal currents   of the river Creation.

The City of the Dead    was just like Arya.
Whether it was a fossil    or a demon’s mirage,
the Dreaded City,    a future or a past,
was consumed by clouds    as Ironraven cried
on his knees in dirt.    Tired of loneliness,
an enemy Calmthirst    could not dispatch,
he turned his heels    from the damned city.
Before him stretched    the open world
of wild Hispania.    Some white hinds
crossed a brook    beside the leaning
larches and willows,    where a raised
range of country    continued into the forest
as the white fog    wisps faded away.

~End~
Bret T. Norwood, 2009.