Black shadows fly
in the bleaching air.
Crows quoth their oaths.
Bitter the day that arrives
with no prayers to say.
Those who walk beneath its sway
shiver and ever wary
of that croaking gravity.
Only the bold scatter
the screeching carrion,
throw their arms to the sky
fists shaken and mad of eye.
The bold and unforsaken
forbid,
their defying faith unbowed -
undoubting and awakened.
Here now you lay, kin to the last,
as a mournsome wind whistles past.
Where do its tones and its currents take you,
you who have given more than is your due?
May the birds borne aloft on its breath
carry your tale past the sill of death,
bearing our memories in their cries
sung brightly among the sundry skies.
We resolve to bear you with us as well,
recalled in every wood, meadow and dell.
For when the nights grow cold and long,
we will warm ourselves with your song.
Each time we chance to walk this way
our respects we will come to pay,
for the victories and the cost
of the honored and of the lost.
Gather the crowberries for this windfeast.
Adorning our cheeks with ochre
we pile together
a throne of old rowan.
The staggards behind us;
warm breath at our napes.
We are as careful as a circle.
So a keening for the wild flightsman,
the hewer of stone, blood-iron hearted,
now dead as a distant star
that points the way of smoke, of fire.
But for a moment the wind resides.
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