Excerpts from the initial stanzas of The Oziad
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The Oziad is the literary exposition of Oz's origin myths. Its author, though thought to have remained anonymous by choice, has been cautiously identified by modern scholars as Pellam Groondy, a marketplace scribe exiled for blasphemy from the unionist monasteries that became, in time, Shiz University.
Though its literary style is more reminiscent of the salon than of the hearthside, the epic reconciles ancient Gillikenese and Munchkinlander legends from the oral tradition about the history of Early Oz. The Oziad draws together in a single narrative arc several contradictory foundation stories about the creation of Oz.
The invention supplies us with the earliest written explanation for the presence in Oz of its human inhabitants as well as its Animal and animal populations. Among other philosophic enquiries, it offers a symbolist explanation of the arrival of evil in Oz's "land of green abandon, land in endless leaf."
Before the storm arrives, before the windThat rakes the sour heavens north to westMakes its argument against our kind,I stake the right to sing against the wind. The valleys moan in river-throated voices. The forests shake their fingers in remorse. The hills that hunch their shoulders in aversion Cannot quell the swell of windy voices.In the airy chorus that advances, [End Page 5] Brooms of anger sweeping down the sky, My voice is bent, bereft of future tenses, Incompetent against the gale's advances. Still the voice will spill, the story tell Of Oz's ancient days and hero days. If none to hear it, none shall hear it well, Told well until the poet's voice is still.
Behold the floor of rhymeless rock, where timeLies sleeping in a cave, a seamless deepAnd dreamless sleep, unpatterned darkWithin, without. Time is a reddened dragon. The claws refuse to clench, though they are made, Are always made in readiness to strike The rock, and spark the flint. Then to ignite The mouth of time that, hungry for a mealWill chew and swallow all our tattered daysAs well as those inhabited by menMore vivid than we now can ever be,Because they were the first to ache, and thrive. Time's dragon nuzzles at its dragon chin. Amnesia steams through its copper lungs. Its blood the juice of emeralds, uncongealed. Because as yet unwounded, yet unhealed.
The world begins by tiniest of strokes,Significance a later, sadder goal.The dazzle of a burning sky at night,When salty stars will polka and gavotte, Is not an origin, but a result. The orange rolls; a hand must push it first. Will is the smallest indivisible muscle. Will is a spider willing itself to skitchSexless, childless, thoughtless, on the spineOf time: the dragon in its cave. The itchProvokes a stretch, the stretch provokes a scratchOf golden dragon claws against the cave, [End Page 6] Against the nameless rock, provokes the burstOf whitened sulfur spark! The fuse is lit!The dragon's furnace starts to roar and rideAnd time, being dreamt within, begins outside.
The world rehearses in its bloody birthThe wrenching throes by which it plans to die.On turning plates of earth, the uncertain hillsRock; and rocks the yet unsettled plinth. The sky is thrown in waves, one on the next, Accumulating breadth in crushed proximity, One night atop the next, a history's worth Of shadows to rise and set beyond the earth.The tablelands adhere, and slip, and stick.The flatlands crawl in fear upon their sex.The wetlands sink as if to drown their sex.And all the sensate forms of land contract. The dragon dreams of isolates space. . . The sky aloof in ribs of starry black, The earth below, ashamed in naked stone, Bereft, unsuckled, cold, inert, alone.
Beneath the deepest fundamental graniteIn a pocket sultry with intentRolls the moon in need; she comes and goes,An ailing, uncorrupted virgin eye. She sees no more than what she sees: An appetite for seeing more arises. So she calls the dragon, who arises, Dreaming peerlessly the endless while.On his...
