There is no peace to be found on this earth save in the moment of sleep,
yet we the descendants of gods find no worth in something we cannot keep;
though the thunder overhead howls and our soldiers find no respite,
so few of us don our cowls; so many walk blind through the night.
Among clergy, we who are sacred, or so we declare of ourselves,
chosen of gods, elevated; trinkets to sit on gods’ shelves,
delicate, breakable, fine, like the thinnest-spun sculpture of glass,
mortal, and yet unconfined; neither broken nor blessed by the past,
we who are ageless come awake, we start and arise from our sleep
when deep underground the hells quake and the waters shift in the deep,
when the gods, the gods, they are calling!; they have unshelved us at last,
so long we have awaited the falling, the sweet simple shatter of glass.
Unleash us, unbind us from servitude! cry the human tools of the gods,
who work in this world as a smith would by smelting with hammer and rods,
by building elaborate structures, by forcing this earth into form;
in the forge, we the tools endure; on the anvil, become tired and worn.
Sweetly do the gods sing to mortal men, and sweeter still do they touch
the lives of all of their ken: the glassmen, perhaps overmuch.
I have been a tool of the gods. I have melted into their mold
like sand into glass unflawed, like watching a story unfold;
I am beloved, I know, and my path is a hard one to follow,
carrying me through sleet and snow, leaving me barren and hollow,
and I know, and I know I am cared for; I know that I am safe in their arms,
for though my soul is left bared by the tempest, I know too their charms:
I know their silent words, their soft glances; I know by the beat of their hearts;
I feel by the steps of their dances a gaze that stings like a dart;
I feel them about in the air, present though I cannot provide,
where their only throne is a chair, and their only hymn is a sigh;
so softly I sing their praises; so slowly I extend my hands,
murmuring archaic phrases in the languages of forgotten lands,
to touch the faces of my keepers where they rest and they watch from the earth:
an underground breed of sleepers who know neither death nor rebirth.
Sweet gods, though it hurts when you forge me like a creature made unto glass,
I am alive and with anvil-made bones bear the strength to confront the past;
I am alive, and with iron-forged hands both build worlds and take them apart;
Alive, and with molten-steel tongue taste the words that pierce man’s heart.
We glasspeople, we are not fragile; we are molten and hallowed with steel.
Glass is surprisingly agile, and lasts through any ordeal:
though cities may fall, temples crumble; though worlds may be burnt down to ash,
the gods will never be humble and their thunder continues to crash:
beneath our progenitors’ skies, in fields adorned in rubble and grass!
The gods once more will rise alongside a people blown all out of glass.

© Jess (BB) “Glass: A hymn about the godtouched“
(via intaier)