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The trees wept blood
at my departure,
staining the whiteness
of birches and butternut,
glittering dark on the maple and oak,
blood that was falling
like leaves in a thousand countries,
greater than augury,
sprung from prophetic wounds,
as I sailed through the mouth
of ancient Thon-Thalas
like a prayer into endless ocean.
In the mazed and elaborate swirl
of omens, of long prophecies,
comes a time when you stand
in the presence of oracles,
but what they foretell
is mirrors and smoke.
When I reached the Courrain
I was standing on deck,
despair having moved
to the country of faith,
and slowly the coast took a shape
and a name, as the forest
dwindled to Silvanost,
green on water on green.
At long last, to portside
lay the watch fires of Balifor,
the manhandling country of kender,
of hoopak and flute
and rifled treasuries.
The smoke from the coastline
mingled with clouds from the mountains
in the high air resolving
to nebulous hammer and harp,
to veiled constellations,
as the shores of Balifor
sighed with departures of gods.
North and west along the coast,
cradled by pine-scented wind,
by infusion of hemlock,
the long plains climbed
into mountainous green,
and everywhere forest and ocean,
ocean and forest twined
with the westernmost haze
of the damaged horizons,
until the traveler's fancy
supposes Silvanost rising again
in dreams of retrieval,
but instead it is priest-ridden Istar,
sacrifice-haunted, where freedom is incense,
the long smoke rising
destroyed in its own celebrations
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