Apprentice to The Telling

28.5.97

When I was young
the storyteller took my hand
You have the look she said
You have the look of one like me
Come willingly and I will teach you
how to keep the roughest ones in thrall
to your imagination
and your telling of our history

I listened at her feet
and sitting round the cooking fires
she told about the days long gone
when ancestors of ours had fought
and perished on the steppe
Sometimes they brought celebration
and their bandages of blood
were marks of honour

Our people rode the treeless plains
encountering the Persians and
where silk comes from the Kashgar
Dealing lapis for a flock of camels newly trained
and repulsing Mongol armies
which would take our grazing ground
and make it theirs

Each honoured name was brought
where flames could flicker round its memory
and we could pay it honour
The storyteller knew where swans
more numerous than any we had seen
would flock along the mirror water
and cygnet beaks tip-tilted to the sky
would jabber in the sunset's fading

Sometimes in the quiet hours
when men were hunting
and women making tattoo patterns
she would let me tell her stories
about my mother or my brothers' ways
my sister's happinesses
my father's sternness
when we met with his displeasure

You tell it so she'd say
but you could turn it on it's head
weave a different thread and make it more exciting
Your father's anger told
without your mother's laughter
when the wolf ate all the mutton
is not so interesting

And the day the horse was digging water
where it flowed below the ground
needs to include your brother's thirst
and his impatience that the horse was first
Without your brother and the horse
without the thirst and the impatience
the story is not so interesting
You must weave it all about
the eyes of listeners around the fire

Each telling must be gauged to them
each lingering approach must carry
old and young before it
You must be aware of eyes
fixed upon the essence of your story
If they start to wander
you are lost

By this method
over many seasons
she taught me how to tell the stories
Sometimes I would stand around the campfire
and later she would gently say
A word or two in here about the river
This line of yours is very good
but do you think it matters that the man was dead
before they sold him into slavery

Every time I listened to her stories
I learned a better way to understand
When to wait as listeners took in the joke
or all the recognition of a horror
How to feed the line to make them weep
Which word would let them understand
honour brought upon our house
clowns who squandered their adventure
for our fond amusement

I earn the cats which face each other
the lions marked upon my saddle covers
My storytelling is the best that ever was
and though I will not live above the ground forever
I have trained a girl to carry on the line
She has more important things to do
than wield a spear or bow

When I am gone below the ground
my tallest headdress fixed on me forever
she will tell the stories which I told
Elaborate with her imagination
a thrall which will around the cooking fire
keep warm through hardest winter ice
each man each woman and each child
the beasts which gather round to listen
and my spirit which will still applaud the telling

copyright 1997 Charlotte Peters Rock

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