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Oct. 11th, 2004 06:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
theravenboyBran is relieved when English class begins, and he can focus on literature instead of Saturday’s odd dream. Miss Peckham believes in teaching her students about their cultural heritage, by which she means throwing large quantities of vaguely Celtic poetry at them and trying endlessly to explain the poems’ relevance to the children of impoverished Welsh farmers. Bran likes her.
“Something special today,” she says “The poet Robert Graves, after studying a number of fragmentary and mysterious Welsh and Irish poems from the Middle Ages, decided that all of the poems must be riddles, the solution to which was another poem. He was very likely wrong about the riddles and their answer, but the poem he discovered, or wrote, draws on some very interesting imagery that might be meaningful to you…”
Bran stops listening to the lecture and amuses himself by watching Miss Peckham’s eyes scan the classroom. She’s thinking, Morgan can’t read this because he’d stammer all through it. Williams barely understands English. Jones could read it, but she’d call it pagan nonsense and refuse. Ah, Davies. Why don’t you--
“Davies,” Miss Peckham says. “Why don’t you read to us from Graves’s ‘Song for Amergin’?”
Bran walks to the front of the room, accepting the mimeographed page Miss Peckham hands him and taking a schoolboy’s recitation stance before the class. “I am the stag : with seven tines,” he reads. “I am a flood : across a plain.” The rhythm of the poem is vaguely familiar and strangely comforting. “I am a wind : on a deep lake.” Bran imagines Tal y Llyn in the October air. “I am a wizard : who but I / Sets the cool head aflame with smoke?” The cool head, like Will, Bran thinks. Aflame with smoke – the look in Mordred’s eyes – Foolish bach, Bran Davies, worrying yourself over dreams. Next stanza. “I am a salmon : in a pool.” There was a Dyfi salmon on someone’s shield once; whose? “I am an infant : who but I / peeps from the unhewn dolmen arch?” Bran wonders what the child is doing in the ancient stone formation.
Last stanza. "I am the w--" and Bran's voice cracks upward, suddenly, in sheer terror, because he knows this line, and the next, and the next. He knows them not as he knows "Fern Hill", which he memorized painstakingly last term, word by word, stanza by stanza, but absolutely, all at once, burned into his soul. Miss Peckham starts up from her seat, as if to aid him, but sits down when Bran continues. "I am the womb--" Bran falters again. Images of stone chests, tapestries, lost cities are appearing in Bran's mind. Very clearly, this time, Bran enunciates, "I am the womb : of every holt." A woman with long dark hair, holding a white infant. Gwennie, her name is; Guinevere. He remembers, he remembers now. "I am the blaze : on every hill." Will must have known always what Bran had lost: the midsummer tree, the crystal sword, the Dark, the flying flower. "I am the queen : of every hive." The sea-blue lord Arthur with his blue eyes, or were they tawny like Bran's and Mordred's ... Mordred. That's why he looked at me that way. "I am the shield : for every head." Bran has two fathers. Bran has a brother, half-brother, something. You will never see your high father again. It's all a loss. Bran gave it all up. What use is memory now?
"I am the tomb : of every hope." Bran stumbles out the door, dazed, not caring whether the class is still because of shock or whether everyone is caught out of Time again. He pushes it open and falls into Milliways.
“Something special today,” she says “The poet Robert Graves, after studying a number of fragmentary and mysterious Welsh and Irish poems from the Middle Ages, decided that all of the poems must be riddles, the solution to which was another poem. He was very likely wrong about the riddles and their answer, but the poem he discovered, or wrote, draws on some very interesting imagery that might be meaningful to you…”
Bran stops listening to the lecture and amuses himself by watching Miss Peckham’s eyes scan the classroom. She’s thinking, Morgan can’t read this because he’d stammer all through it. Williams barely understands English. Jones could read it, but she’d call it pagan nonsense and refuse. Ah, Davies. Why don’t you--
“Davies,” Miss Peckham says. “Why don’t you read to us from Graves’s ‘Song for Amergin’?”
Bran walks to the front of the room, accepting the mimeographed page Miss Peckham hands him and taking a schoolboy’s recitation stance before the class. “I am the stag : with seven tines,” he reads. “I am a flood : across a plain.” The rhythm of the poem is vaguely familiar and strangely comforting. “I am a wind : on a deep lake.” Bran imagines Tal y Llyn in the October air. “I am a wizard : who but I / Sets the cool head aflame with smoke?” The cool head, like Will, Bran thinks. Aflame with smoke – the look in Mordred’s eyes – Foolish bach, Bran Davies, worrying yourself over dreams. Next stanza. “I am a salmon : in a pool.” There was a Dyfi salmon on someone’s shield once; whose? “I am an infant : who but I / peeps from the unhewn dolmen arch?” Bran wonders what the child is doing in the ancient stone formation.
Last stanza. "I am the w--" and Bran's voice cracks upward, suddenly, in sheer terror, because he knows this line, and the next, and the next. He knows them not as he knows "Fern Hill", which he memorized painstakingly last term, word by word, stanza by stanza, but absolutely, all at once, burned into his soul. Miss Peckham starts up from her seat, as if to aid him, but sits down when Bran continues. "I am the womb--" Bran falters again. Images of stone chests, tapestries, lost cities are appearing in Bran's mind. Very clearly, this time, Bran enunciates, "I am the womb : of every holt." A woman with long dark hair, holding a white infant. Gwennie, her name is; Guinevere. He remembers, he remembers now. "I am the blaze : on every hill." Will must have known always what Bran had lost: the midsummer tree, the crystal sword, the Dark, the flying flower. "I am the queen : of every hive." The sea-blue lord Arthur with his blue eyes, or were they tawny like Bran's and Mordred's ... Mordred. That's why he looked at me that way. "I am the shield : for every head." Bran has two fathers. Bran has a brother, half-brother, something. You will never see your high father again. It's all a loss. Bran gave it all up. What use is memory now?
"I am the tomb : of every hope." Bran stumbles out the door, dazed, not caring whether the class is still because of shock or whether everyone is caught out of Time again. He pushes it open and falls into Milliways.
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no subject
Date: 2004-10-11 07:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-11 07:32 pm (UTC)