Poetry Blog 204 The Travelling Tales

 

THE TRAVELLING TALES

Though some of the original collectors of folk tales, like the brothers Grimm, were partly motivated by a desire to preserve national culture, what is outstanding when comparing these tales from many cultures is how universal humanity's stories are. Looking at their stories it is clear that human beings are very similar in essence in all places. This reflection was the motive behind this poem. 

 by Perla Marina

 

THE TRAVELLING TALES

The spoken story is the human claim,

And though its characters are changelings,

They keep their constant qualities-

The drama of the tale remains the same.

From patient farmers in rice paddies

Beside the waters of the wide Hwang-Ho,

To scattered tribes in vast Siberia

Who herded reindeer long ago;

To crowded deltas of Old India,

The mother of so many tales;

To fishing coasts where monsoons blow

And sway the tops of village palms;

To dark, enchanted fir tree forests

In older Europe, once upon a time;

From Baghdad to Rome, from Moscow to Nepal,

The folk's tales travelled, in prose or rhyme,

On gypsy trails, in minstrels' songs,

In travellers' talk, in old wives' telling.

The spoken story is the wise one's way,

The image having depth beyond first sense

As through the form and fabled meaning

Moves more than abstract thought can say.

These are the stories from

The endless empires of the soul:

The tales of all dreamtimes,

The rumourings that come

From west of the moon,

And east of the sun.

These are the tales that tell

Of deep abiding magic in

The hidden nature of the human,

With knapsacks that harbour

The roaming winds of heaven,

Truth-telling mirrors, magic words,

The golden or the fire birds;

The powerful genie and the fierce

And vengeful spirit in a flask;

Or wise, enchanted beasts

Who solve a hopeless task,

And cunning dwarfs and clumsy giants,

And spell-bound beauty and fortune's gifts;

Enchanted fruit at this world's end,

The flying ship that sails the land;

And seven's sign of time,

Or three, bold brothers,

Like three fraternal forces in our souls,

Or twelve fair princesses who sleep by day

And dance the secret, star-blessed night away.

The spoken story is the human spell,

And though its characters are changelings,

They keep their constant qualities-

A deeper truth from memory's well.

These are the tales are

As ancient as first laughter;

The stories of all folly,

Wise fools and foolish holy-

The crafty and the cunning wit,

The sly and pride-destroying trick.

These are the tales in which we see

Awakening awareness and the clarity

Of conscious and perceptive thought-

As with the craft of ancient Wahn,

The white crow with his tricks who flew

Far in Australia's time of dream;

The force-defeating cunning of Coyote

Who played his tricks upon the prairie;

Or India's quick-witted Jackal

Who caged the tiger's deadly rage;

Brer Rabbit, bred in the brier patch,

Who came with folk, in slaving sorrow,

From Africa's rich coasts and far, vast plains.

These are the tales of jesters fooling kings,

Of meaning's point on many things;

The many pranks of master Tyll,

The cunning little tailors swaggering

To victory with foolish, powerful foes;

From Odysseus to Renard, the characters

Of cunning show clear thinking's worth

And play their pranks for everyone on earth.

The spoken story was before the page;

And yet it lives from age to age,

Reborn in novels, films, and plays,

From hidden depths of human ways.

For under each and every sky

There lives the family of tales.

Why must we hate

For blind, dry, useless dogma's sake?

In that folk heaven we are one

Beneath our sister moon and brother sun.