Enjoy this reading of the poem Canticle of the Dragon by Michael Williams. This poem appeared in Leaves from the Inn of the Last Home, released in 1987. Buy Leaves from the Inn of the Last Home: https://amzn.to/39TClwb
Canticle of the Dragon
Out of the darkness of dragons,
out of our cries for light
in the blank face of the black moon soaring,
a banked light flared in Solamnia,
a knight of truth and of power,
who called down the gods themselves
and forged the mighty Dragonlance, piercing the soul
of dragonkind, driving the shade of their wings
from the brightening shores of Krynn.
Paladine, the Great God of Good
shone at the side of Huma,
strengthening the lance of his strong right arm,
and Huma, ablaze in a thousand moons,
banished the Queen of Darkness,
banishes the swarm of her shrieking hosts
back to the senseless kingdom of death, where their curses
swoop upon nothing and nothing
deep below the brightening land.
Thus ended in thunder the Age of Dreams
and began the Age of Might,
When Istar, kingdom of light and truth, arose in the east,
where minarets of white and gold
spired to the sun and to the sun’s glory,
announcing the passing of evil,
and Istar, who mothered and cradled the long summers of good,
shone like a meteor
in the white skies of the just.
Yet in the fullness of sunlight
the Kingpriest of Istar saw shadows:
At night he saw the trees as things with daggers, the streams
blackened and thickened under the silent moon.
He searched for books for the paths of huma
for scrolls, signs, and spells
so that he, too, might summon the gods, might find
their aid in his holy aims,
might purge the world of sin.
Then came the time of dark and death
as the gods turned from the world.
A mountain of fire crashed like a comet through Istar,
the city split like a skull in the flames,
mountains burst from once-fertile valleys,
seas poured into the graves of mountains,
the deserts sighed on abandoned floors of the seas,
the highways of Krynn erupted
and became the paths of the dead.
Thus began the Age of Despair.
The roads were tangled.
The winds and the sandstorms dwelt in the husks of cities,
The plains and mountains became our home.
As the old gods lost their power,
we called to the blank sky
into the cold, dividing gray to the ears of new gods.
The sky is calm, silent, unmoving.
We had yet to hear their answer.
Then to the east, to the Sunken City
scarred in its loss of blue light,
came the Heroes, the Innfellows, heirs to the burdens,
out of their tunnels and their arching forests,
out of the lowness of plains, the lowness
of huts in the valleys,
the stunned farms under the warlords and darkness.
They came serving the light,
the covered flames of healing and grace.
From there, pursued by the armies,
The cold and glittering legions, they came
Bearing the staff to the arms of the shattered city,
Where below the weeds and the birdcall,
Below the vallenwood, below forever,
Below the riding darkness itself,
A hole in the darkness called to the source of the light,
Drawing all light to the core of light,
To the first fullness of its godly dazzle.
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