Hyperboreá#
I - Into The Middle of Things
The snow descends upon a place
sequestered on a crown,
a hidden place the heights embrace
to shield from view a town.
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This muted evening taking shape
as silence softly falls,
conceals beneath its winter cape
a place no one recalls.
A lantern flickers through the storm,
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a single maid who dares,
so cold with cloaks to keep her warm,
while whispering her prayers.
She trudges over covered tracks
and braves the icy route.
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Her prayers return as winter sacks
this town of no repute.
Its isolation near complete,
for ages left alone,
as empires grew below by fleet,
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now gone and overthrown.
A secret town disguised by peaks
from surface schemes and crime,
diverged in course by years and weeks
til clocks told different time.
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Yet even still, the heights adhere
to certain timeless laws.
The precious seconds disappear
as over snow she claws.
Ahead, and in the mist, she spots
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the crowd of gathered heads,
obscured again as winter blots
her sight and quickly spreads.
She cries aloud, but even here,
where sounds behave so weird,
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in stormy drifts, through drafts severe,
her voice is commandeered.
And like the town, her cry is missed,
for no one thought to glance,
yet staunch and firm, her goals persist,
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so onward lines advance.
The town and maid are bound in fate,
though neither know it yet,
for only love propels her gait,
and drives her thoughts to fret.
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An understanding fails to come
without a prior ear,
attuned to hear the story’s hum
beneath this cold veneer.
This maid above, unknown below,
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is known up here by name,
her family deeds in pages sow
the seeds of royal fame.
Despite her claim of regal right,
against her father’s will,
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she left the castle late at night
and hurried off down hill.
And now she chases after him,
the boy who stole her heart,
as crowds surround the gallows’ rim
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and wait for shows to start.
She presses through the silent throngs,
and barely hides her rage,
as magistrates prepare the tongs
for hooded men on stage.
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A judge in robes unrolls his scrolls,
with edicts inked in black,
and to the crowd aloud extols,
while bailiffs crank the rack,
“Tonight, this hallowed eve of Hush,
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when winter cloaks the noise,”
he says into a silence lush
with once forgotten joys,
“Recall what laws up here are held,
and why we keep them still,”
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as icy winds in tempests swelled
and knives prepared to kill.
But surface dwellers need accounts
of how things are designed,
and why a maid, from throne, dismounts,
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to leave it all behind.
So listen close, behold the parts
phantasmagoria
conceals in prose, but still imparts
to Hyperborea.
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II - From The Egg
Once long ago, when men were brutes,
and mountains hid in knolls,
a few of them up here found fruits
to gather up in bowls.
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And as they dined upon the flesh,
the world began to change,
so when they stood, their minds now fresh,
the world became quite strange.
An awful quake then shook the ground
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and flung them to the sky,
where there they stayed, on summit crowned,
to live and multiply.
The first of them to speak then heard
his voice return in sound,
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an echo loud, distinct but slurred,
and ringing all around.
Tectonic waves had carved a bay
from angled rock to hold
the overlapping crests that spray
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their noises uncontrolled.
This madness long had ruled their lands,
where words, reversed, exchange
their echoes back like rubber bands
across the mountain range.
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At first, the words reheard deferred
the dialogues of friends
but everywhere the curse recurred
where open air attends.
With quarries mined and stripped of ores,
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the walls arose in rows
but always shaking trembled floors,
as echoes split in flows.
Their padded walls were thickly made
around their claimed homesteads,
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yet every day, the bell’s cascade
at noon invaded heads.
A kingdom grew by days deranged,
remade above the sky,
as generations left them changed
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and hard to classify.
Where down below the wars arose
for power, salt and tin,
up here they battled greater foes
of discord, noise and din.
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Their deeds were drawn in metric feet,
to cease the wagging tongues.
Each beat was marked on ledger sheet,
the real estate of lungs.
A sentence measured out was taxed
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at rates none could afford,
except the noble lords relaxed
in riches they had stored.
Despite these lengths, their words returned
and drove them more insane;
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a tyrant promised ease unearned
and seized the throne to reign.
His grace then placed a clause in laws
to cause a pause to rhymes,
for rhymes were crimes within the claws
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of lawful paradigms.
Decrees came down for reasons why
they organized police,
and motions passed to codify
that rhymes disturb the peace.
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The poets’ screams for days decayed
inside the dungeon walls,
then days again when wind replayed
their cries reborn in squalls.
III - Resonance
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IN PROGRESS
IV - Echoes & Avalanches
IN PROGRESS
Original: Feburary 2025
Revision I: September 2025
Revision II: February 2026
Revision III: May 2026