Pages from the Archives of Cîr Imladris by Lferion

Cîr.Im-A37 | End of Autumn (Painting and Poem)

The first two stanzas of the poem were originally written for Fan Flashworks and posted here. Commenter deadfinch remarked that sideways, the lines would feel like trees, and I took that idea and ran with it for the SWG Experimental challenge.

Posted on AO3 here.

Art Catalogue Description:

This item is a wet-on-wet watercolor apparently depicting a wide teal blue sky over a maroon hill with an orange-brown forest (or perhaps a streak of sunrise) which is reflected in a darker blue lake. Over the painting, a poem has been inscribed in dark blue ink, running the width of the piece, and the words are also reflected in the water, accurately mirror-image. The lines are written vertically, the lower edges following the curve of the hill, giving the impression of late autumnal tree-stems. The calligraphy is very finely done: the letters above perfectly discernible, the mirroring accurately blurred.

Text of Poem:

Listen to the wind
Whispering
Between the barren trees
Listen to the grasses
Hissing
Presently to freeze

Feel the silver mist
Gathering
In the valley's folds
Feel the evening shadows
Creeping
Where the raven scolds

See the moonlight pale
Glimmering
On the Barrow-down
See the eldritch sheen
Seeping
Neath the carven crown

Smell the athelas
Flowering
Even in these dales
Smell the water lilies
Blooming
As the sunlight pales

So grows the nightshade
Thickening
In dim mead and dell
Aconite and hellebore
Growing
Poisonous and fell

Ware the twilit woods
Murmuring
Where ashen gloom doth spread
Ware the too-still water
Darkling
And the Watcher dread

Archivist's Notes:

The origins of this poem are unknown. Nothing else quite like it is in the Archive, despite the extent of the late Second Age poetry collection. (The reference to the Barrow-Down, singular, implies a composition date of no later than the establishment of Rivendell, for while the oldest barrows were erected in a line on one ridge/fold of the area some time prior to the end of the First Age, the second line was constructed SA ~1600 - 2100, and the subsequent barrows are Post-Cataclysm. Unless the piece is a translation, and that line is a substitution for something else.)

The artwork is also difficult to place with precision. The Song(s) of Preservation on it are so layered and strongly Sung (the most recent being the preparation for Sailing) that determining the age of the paper is not possible by ordinary means. If the painting in Index 6b* is this one (opinions are strongly divided), then the painting itself dates no later than the flowering of Lindon, before the founding of Imladris. The low accession number sets the initial cataloging date definitively pre-SA2086. The poem was certainly inscribed by that time, as the initial catalogue entry includes the text.

* In Cîr.Im-IN:6b-p1- 64 | List of Contents, Cart 2, Crate 7, Lindon to Imladris 3, includes an item-listing (#3) for what is most likely the base-painting, before the poem was inscribed upon it. Also in the list is #8: partial bead-painting of that spooky poem. Currently (53 4th Age, Aman) nothing that might be described as a 'bead painting' is indexed among the artifact collection. If it is in the Uncatalogued material, presumably it will show up eventually. If the 'spooky poem' is the same as this one, our knowledge of all three of these items will be considerably increased.