One tradition in storytelling that survives still among a few wandering fabulists like myself is the “bardic singsong,” for lack of a better term. Ancient singers of tales, Homer, for instance, used verse for his music, but also as a practical kind of memory. Imagine that you are responsible for performing ten thousand lines of epic poetry. If a line’s end word rhymes with a neighbor nearby, remembering the first suggests the next. Therefore, if you can remember five thousand lines, you get an extra five thousand for free, so to speak. Not bad. This is how they did it long ago.
Bitten by this idea, about twenty years ago I set about to write an epic poem that employs the “bardic singsong.” This is in complete contrast to my usual performance style––using character voices, vocal effects, extemporaneous music and words in a kind of muse-driven dream state. If that style is like jazz, then this style is the classical symphony approach.
Here then, for a lark, are a few scattered excerpts from my epic poem, The Rowan Canticles: A Tale Told in the Ancient Manner. These snippets drawn from here and there across the story, refer only to themselves and are best read aloud using the “bardic singsong” in a state of gentle bemusement.
* * * * * *
If our fortunes were to us known
And we, like playwrights, plotted chance,
Then, assuming we’d not outgrown
Our zest for love, if not romance,
We’d probably have too much fun,
Too fast, too long, until we longed
For something that we had not done,
For pain, for worth, for being wronged,
For all the things that bruise our souls
As life bumps through Time’s opaque doors.
No wonder, then, we’re cast in roles
Where each one of the next implores
One’s lines just as the story’s writ.
This saves the plot, more oft than not,
Not knowing what will come of it.
* * * * * *
Love, at its best, wipes commonsense
Away. Much as drops will condense
From hidden liquid in the air,
So, too, do lovers quick compare
Their temp’ratures, til, happily,
Their judgment fogs up suddenly.
* * * * * *
Past sense and mem’ry, well below
Instinct––but near it––an outflow
Of ancient expectations gleams.
These flick’ring pictures––nascent schemes
Convincing us that we should live,
Find love at some point, learn to give,
Do work, renew the species, dance,
And other things life’s stunning chance
Affords––implore us, through our dreams
(Whose archetypes suggest extremes
Our forebears lived) to wiggle loose
From where we swing, caught in the noose
Of passive living’s dull routine.
* * * * * *
If souls through lives recirculate
Until our long perfecting’s stilled,
Where do we all accumulate
Once we’re perfected and fulfilled?
What’s there to do, once all is done,
Except, perhaps, to reminisce––
To dream of the imperfect fun
We had while seeking boring bliss?
* * * * * *
Love, ’tis a weed lest it’s an oak:
True love the heart’s earth grapples slow,
While false love’s promise, quick to poke
Itself upward and spread its show,
Ne’er finds the height that time bestows.
Instead it bursts its heated bloom
And shudders, dying as it grows
In passing clouds of sweet perfume.
* * * * * *
If sleep were where our lives took place
And day just solid-seeming dream,
Then how we slept would fast replace
All love, all work, his’try’s vast scheme,
All art and science with a snore
Or two, whilst we, alone and chased
‘Cross shifting scapes of soul and lore,
Would end up lost, our gains effaced
By dreaming’s fickle memory.
P’raps best it is, for all its woe,
To leave day its hegemony.
At least we know then whom we owe
In life’s preposterous gamble.
* * * * * *
If talent is a godsent gift
But like a ruby deep in ore
Must first be mined ‘for it can shine,
Then without effort’s discipline
To shovel off the dirt it’s in
And haul it up from its dark mine
It’s rather useless, hardly more
Engaging than a mind adrift
To nowhere. Virtuosi know
This all too well—those endless years
Of parsing bits of nimbleness
It takes to dare the instrument
To shine.
* * * * * *
If we sped time a thousand-fold
Then spied on silent, leafy plants
Who stand stock-still above their roots,
We’d soon grasp how wildly alive
Our green-clad cousins are: they strive
And twist for space, wiggle their shoots,
And whip their leaves like flagellants
As noons fly past. Pulse-pediceled,
Their flowers flutter open, close,
Spit seeds and dry o’er flick’ring days.
All this occurs beneath our feet
And ‘bove our heads as we attend
To what our minds best comprehend.
* * * * * *
Our hopes paint pictures ‘cross our minds
Which as we close each day’s soft door
Of sleep, we’d have remain the same
As each was in our morning’s eye.
Rare are the days though, which comply
With our fond wishes; no, most claim
Their independence from the corps
Of our fond dreams and plot all kinds
Of madnesses to keep us sane
And humble. Life thus plays its game
With us, we, ‘pon its counterpane,
Just pieces, spying ‘cross the same
Diagonals long since ordained
By others.
* * * * * *
If life is long, and friends are true,
And we no bridges choose to burn,
Then even though the years may pass
––And we all sep’rate lives have known––
Somewhere behind us, fields we’ve sown
With kindness rise, a lush, sweet grass
Of friends who, called by our return,
Rise up as one to help us through
Hard times.
Odds Bodkin will be leading a workshop June 5-7, 2009. Click for details.
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