The
terrace troll
Like a rock pile misaligned
With protruding buttocks pushed behind
Grey knobby legs spayed out front
and supporting one big most ugly lump
of rock, that was his knobby head
that lay cradled within his arms atop his knees
abed
That he aroused sounds like rocks a clatter
Sort of rumbling as he breathed, didn’t begin to matter
That shrubs had fought in desperation around
his limbs
let him play games of ‘I’ll guess who wins’
and when he was right, plans he’d refine , Like stay right here until I dies,
but the bird shit sometimes slipped down in
his eyes
and so for many, many seasons,
nature would come betwixt his reasons
from ere the last snow’s comfort would depart
or autumn leaves falling, broke his heart
always watching the misty valley, far below
change a bit with every year, so nice and slow
this was nigh the sunset of that age of power
highborn still most often, yet cautious to
deflower
Old lands filled with ancient legends and
caprice
Where in times fore this arrival all peoples here had vanished thrice
but short lived men grew old and worried less for that
to scoff at tales of ruin from far places on the map
Over the years farms came to the valley and he
watched them spread.
“ All most as fast as fire he mused” and wondered
where it lead
Many
times changes from such fires, where all was turned to ash
with the growth, in later years where the forest
returned at last
This was new, it came in squares and varied with
the days
as he watched the growers, cut and turn the
barley and the hays.
Roads appeared and soon a town
That turned to stone, while it gathered round
Walls and towers and a then keep
With a blue encircling moat both wide
and deep
At troll’s hill's base appeared small warding
signs
Saying the king forbids any to cross this line
But folk often
picnicked near there anyway
finding it a pleasant place to waste such time
away
During
summer nights the thieves sometimes arrive to mark
plans for the nights or to carouse a bit , and
then depart
Troll up there didn’t mind, He was content
having all he’d ever need.
But just like the birds, thieves sometimes peed.
A time was when a horde of men and machines
appeared outside the walls
the sky filled with smoking balls of fire,
stones and the lightning that they called
to strike down repeatedly on the city’s
pavements, the ramparts of the walls and great towers
magic marking trails and glaring ribbons of light
flowed back from the defenders at all hours
Flaring upon
gruesomely varied layers and
clouds of smoke while sun and moons
were covered
As time passed the rectangles in the valley
began to distort and blend into one another,
One night the ;lights were gone save for a few
small scattered fires
Some voices spoke in the darkness up upon the hill , “You know they are always
liars”
A woman’s voice, “If I don’t go to him 300 more
each day will die”
another says “But your the last one bound to
this land, If you go we can’t even try”
“We won’t let you” say another”, and there are
sounds of running and pursuit
The troll feel branches brushing on it’s face
as a climber comes through the roots
He feels the creature scale a leg and then
clamber above his eyes
and wonder precious wonder, feels drops like
rain from a clear sky
and traces one such droplet in a crevice, that
trickles very slowly
for an eternity , Its important, so important,
that quickly it should move quickly
to touch his own eye before he can think
now the rare unrecorded, in all the ages, He
wills himself to blink
And forces the tear to mix with new tears
suddenly born of his own
As reaches up gently to lift the princess from
where his head was overgrown
rises feeling such complete certainty that
shakes it the mountainside,
Absolutely
he will right the wrong, that for the first time has made him cry
Magic he binds to sooth her with the love that
encompasses everything he has been or seen
And what he would do comes to him like whispers
in a dream
Down In the valley is what troubled her,
something in the lands below
It’s but a stride to step down from the hill,
once he decides to go
The first thing he sees and crushes are all
machines he can feel that she hates
He circles the city crushing them meeting an
army at the gates
They wheel around him, none that near, mages
sending magic across
He pauses, yes, They pain her too, so he tells
the earth to toss
putting the army deep underneath and in a moment it
is done,
The land is empty, outside the walls mounds of
dirt steam in the sun
He looks for the rest of her pain, Can tell the
keep is where it dwells
Stepping quickly through the walls, up to the
moat, he never notices that the towers fell
He swings his fist at the castle wall but its
slippery and he can’t reach
He is pushed back by a wall of magic as he tries
to grip it underneath
He pounds at it for an hour, But it stands his
ripping fails,
Then he tears the ground around asunder, also to
no avail
And magic, that even he can notice, occasionally
gives him pain
and now a shadow covers him and he turns to be
bathed in flame
by a crimson dragon, summoned somehow by those
within keep
and the dragons flame it pains him and it pains
him deep
So he reached out and crushes it, between his
cliff like hands
and steps back considering the keep and his
trust over the land
Since they summoned an ancient power , he could
use the same
and dragons were nearly the smallest power he
could name
He turned and began walking back up to his place
on the hill
While the ground began to quiver, like a bowl of
water sometimes will
A tumbled ridge of boulders running down from
the hill’s crest
Lumpy head supported by one arm’s tower of
rock that’s pressed
underneath it, while the other palm spreads as
a ledge between
The troll and the smoking mountain in front that
could be seen
His palm is open there so he can also see one
other thing
Though her bones are long since gone, she had a
silver ring
Saul Scudder,
December 1999