I and Ragnarok

Read Write Poem's prompt this week is to repeatedly use a vowel. The technical term for this is assonance. I thought it would make an interestingly non-traditional vehicle for a look at Norse mythology: Norse/Germanic/Old English poetry used a lot of alliteration, but strictly based on consonants.

This poem also borrows elements of villanelle structure.

Ragnarok, the Norse end-time,
when gods and giants meet to fight
is equal parts of ice and fire.

As when two continents collide
and crumpled edges slowly rise
to mountains tipped with ageless ice

or are forced down, out of the light
to join the mantle's molten tides
that feed volcanoes spewing fire.

Or comets, in elliptic flight
through frozen trans-Plutonic night
slow-spinning balls of dirty ice

are drawn, like moths to something bright,
down, sunward: frozen flesh sublimes
with every kiss of solar fire.

A slow, but world-reshaping strife,
a sudden shock of comet-strike,
or mythic battles ending life?
New lands rise in fire and ice.

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