[To my daughter:
From my recent compilation of poems by Maglor, I omitted a number of pieces which seem to me too painful for widespread reading at the current time, although like the rest of his work it must have been meant to be sung.
And as for that: my foster-father was known as "great in song." To present eyes, this title is in conflict with words which often seem little different from speech. Celeborn, when he first gave me the manuscripts to sift through, explained to me that what made Maglor's work so new and lovely to the ears of the Eldar was precisely that he abandoned such device as rhyme, timbre, and cadence in favour of what Celeborn termed "rhyme of thought, and of the heart." Occasionally he will take up a simple metre, although nothing comparable to the Elvish verse you will have encountered.
I will refrain from further editorials and guesses, save to note the following: to my surprise, and discomfort, Celeborn identifies the woman in the second piece as "probably Galadriel." If that is so, and given clues in the wording, it seems it must have been composed on the attempted crossing at Helcaraxë.
– Elrond Half-Elven]
1.
burrow deeper, where the roots of rotting Trees
burn sickly lamps
for worms that never asked for light
but chew unheeding through the black,
beneath the eating flames
that billow by the harbour,
where white wood blackens, curls,
and sinks through salt, and falls apart.
beneath the hound's fur chokes his collar
beneath the stumble breaks the branch
beneath the harp's song, bellies of the cat stretch taut
beneath the camps of Men they bury bones
and underneath my skin, locked in my ribs,
my vow cries out and rattles in its cage.
2.
where the ice grinds down its teeth in pain
I told you of my dream:
my son would call you mother.
yes, you said, and no.
snow fell, each flake
a lost and frozen island.
in the wind I heard
a hundred sounds
like slaps of oars pushed in the sea to drown
then hauled back up
to gasp in winter air,
and sunk again.
you walked on, so sure, and I
returned in silence to my proper place.
3.
I hope the killing stroke comes soon,
that Mandos will be broad and hushed,
with halls hewn out of roughened rock,
not polished to black mirrors.
I hope the endless tunnels will be throats
to swallow up and squeeze away my every word,
that no matter where I walk, nor for how long,
I never meet another shade,
but I want a little window, far too high to reach,
and a little bird to bear me news, one day to say
that you have grown, the next
that you have stayed living long enough to wed,
and after Ages past, to come a third day,
singing that you have forgiven me.