The Centiops and the First Wizard
The Centiops and the First Wizard
I.
The ancient Centiops has a great many eyes
That see forwards and backwards, outsides and insides
It sees the future, the past, while it watches the present
It sees where you’re going and sees where you went
While it sits very still at the top of the world
When the earth raised the rocks in the earliest age
It rose upon waves of trembling crags
Up, up, up where the birds won’t fly
And deep in a cave like a mouth in the sky
Where all comings and goings are chronicled
The four winds of change hold their council there
And wait for their season and gather the air
While the Centiops weighs the scales of balance
Measures true time by the sun’s own brilliance
And sends forth the winds to cycle the rhythms
It sees the same things as you do, or I
But it sees every angle through each piercing eye
Then it clacks its eyelids shut
And cages inside a single thought
Tracing its path through chaotic systems
When it finds a beginning and reaches the end
It wraps them in circles to begin once again
Because knowledge can be written in orderly lines
But wisdom connects all the changes through time
Like a tapestry of the renewal of life
Still in its thoughts, it sees every wonder
How little things build to affect all the bigger
How big things look small in the bigger picture
And the tiniest of all, binds it together
Like promises balanced on the blade of a knife
II.
When Contara D’Arc, the warrior queen
Called out to her people with snail goo painting
Statements of injustice and dangerous thoughts
And woke up her people, who rose up and fought
In the Night of One Thousand Cuts
The Land Lords, in their hubris, slept
Paid with their lives, the slaver’s debt
Died in their beds, stabbed through their dreams
Never to wake, or even to scream
A new era born, while one firmly shuts
The few that escaped, fled to the mountains
Where giants can hide in the largest of caverns
But deep under stone, with little to eat
So much to work, and the air without heat
They grew stronger than ever, but shrunk in their stature
They dug through the heart of the highest peak
And learned the language that shadow’s speak
Mined out the veins of magical crystals
Forged the first metals and hid in their halls
Still mean and bitter, they shrunk even further
The opposite happened to the Proles of Indus
Who grew just as tall as you or I do
But the people split into two separate factions
One with the statements, and one with the questions
People of action or contemplation
They couldn’t agree, but they still stuck together
For one was not whole without part of the other
Their freedom was gained from violent rebellion
That stayed in some hearts through every telling
But the peaceful sought creation
III.
Pliny Ptolemy of the Indus Proles
Was born with two divided souls
One with language and one sublime
Because words always fail what they can not define
But when words form questions, there’s truth between lies
His questions too deep and profound to speak
So they echoed beyond him as something to seek
He knew that the only way he would find
Was to ask the wisest of all living kind
To speak to the Centiops and see through its eyes
He crossed the wide plains and waded through streams
Was carried down rivers, got lost in his dreams
He breathed with the wind, and shivered when cold
Listened to nature, did as he was told
Slept in the foothills of the towering mountain
He took a long look at the flowering green
Filled with small stories of quietly living
Listened to the symphony of the world breathing
Held a brief moment of understanding
And lost himself inside of a deeper plan
The moment detached was quickly deposed
When a mosquito buzzed to the tip of his nose
And he slapped his own face, in fear of the bite
A sharp waking up to his present sight
Laughing, he lost the deeper perception
With one look back at the verdant valley
He began his climb up the towering empty
But Pliny soon found amongst the shadows of stones
That life still abounds in quieter tones
Adapts to the wisdom of constant connection
IV.
Up, up the mountain, Pliny toiled
He bloodied his feet and stubbed all his toes
His head numb from cold, his arms weak from climbing
He hid in the rocks from the winds’ louder howling
And found a small hole, leading inside
Wearied and tired, and safe for a while
He fell fast asleep on a pillow of shale
In an arterial cave where darkness awoke
Where light turned to shadow and finally broke
Where echoes of color paled and then died
But life finds a link wherever it goes
Adapts to its nature, shrinks and grows
Here in the stone, the dwarves made their homes
Under forests of mushrooms in deep catacombs
And crawling things hunted by luciferian light
They learned how to read the mountain’s heart strings
That pulsed like a web with any prey moving
And so were alerted to Pliny’s short rest
At the door to the underground cities of darkness
And snuck and sneaked to snatch while he slept
The dwarves had him bound before he could fight
Before Pliny, could even, put name to his plight
They dragged him down deep, while cursing his kind
He fled in his terror to a joy in his mind
Where nightmares are calmed into dreams of sunrise
Locked away in a box of stone and of steel
With no bread or water, the air too short to feel
He was jeered and prodded, then left there to rot
But instead of despair, he grounded his spot
In absolute stillness, his mind shed its lies
V.
Where once he was Pliny, he now was connection
To everything living that touched its creation
With innermost eye, he searched deeper meaning
And pulled forth the magic that spelled in each feeling
The rock all around him, shuddered and woke
Creatures of stone were summoned from slumber
When scales of magic were spelled to the air
They wrapped around Pliny and merged with the mountain
That yielded like water to the elemental golem
And flowed to the summit like ash heavy smoke
Pliny let go of his magical lock
And the golem returned to its home in the rock
It was time for Pliny to end his long journey
The Centiops was near with wisdom to parlay
He pulled in his breath and picked his own way
There in its cave, while the winds gathered rains
The Centiops watched what changed or remains
And for the first time in its primordial existence
It turned more than one eye to one single witness
As Pliny Ptolemy sought what words to say
Pliny had marched through the valleys of green
Was jailed and then freed by magical means
Climbed the tall mountains, found life in it all
And now he found himself in the Centiops’ hall
Seeking what he so desperately yearned
It did not speak as he came up close
He gathered his courage and wrinkled his nose
Then turned on his heels and led with his toes
For he could not ask what he already knows
Some things can’t be taught, they have to be earned