Thursday, August 4, 2016

La Profecía

Escuche esta profecía
Para salavarse algún día.
Un hombre moreno traerá
Ruina a la casa regia
Durante la noche.

Cuando hace mal tiempo,
El mundo está en mucho peligro
Durante la noche.

Use la maza y espere
Al héroe de una tierra
Que está lejos y hace frío.
Tendrá el pelo amarillo.
Sueños traerán peligro,
Y tristeza vendrá con matrimonio
Durante la noche.


Yes, this is a poem in Spanish. At least it is an attempt at one.

I was going through my oldest surviving draft of the story that eventually became The Three Towers of Afranor and, as I have previously explained, it was in Spanish. Specifically, it was in the Spanish that high school students learned in the California school system. Back then the story was called simply Las Tres Torres. I thought for fun I would share the poem that I wrote as a preface. It is meant to be the prophecy referred to by Lady Aigneis (originally la señora Inés) in the early chapters. Needless to say, it was a rip-off of, I mean an homage to, J.R.R. Tolkien’s famous “One Ring to rule them all” verse from The Lord of the Rings.

This poem is kind of embarrassing for me to read now. The only good thing about it is that people who have no understanding of Spanish may not realize just how lame it is.

It seemed appropriate to post this embarrassment from my teenage years since one of the main themes in The Three Towers of Afranor is courage. It took a lot of courage for me to post it. If I can get up even more courage, I might post other extracts from the old drafts.