1: Pierre Antoine Zahnd

A variation on the Völuspá: where gods animate the first humans

It began as a bad joke,
when Dvalin or Dain convinced
the simpleton brother
to trundle back a wheelbarrow full of clay
for the metal workers.
The dwarves hardly dabbled
In anything other than armour
and jewels, but they took
an odd liking to clay: the ease
in modelling, the glow
when you sinter it to a glaze.
 
After a while
the dwarves took the shapes out of the kiln
and named them.
Once they were cool and hard
on the stone floor,
as a dare,
one of them raised his chisel
and claimed that they
could ‘make these figures real’.
 
So they went for it,
the dark workshop lit like a night sky
under the sparks. They paused
as the sun came up, opened a blind,
and smirked at the sight of their craft.
 
But when spoken to
the things made no answer:
try as the dwarves might,
no matter how perfect
the curve of the eye, the motion sculpted
in the silhouette,
the creatures they’d intended
to flood with passions devouring as their own
kept quiet.
Who knows how long they’d been gathering rain there,
discarded by the ditch
where we found them.