---

Come, Muses, and sing through me

of the sunlit next world

come, sages, show me the path

to a calm harbor after pain

Who asks, and from what depths?

the owner, the architect,

the innermost core of being

or a blind fool in chains?

tell us what you can see

from a place above us all

from a trap inside your mind

powerless to change

flying ever outward

no more free than a stone

cast from the heights

The more that I chase,

the harder I grasp,

the more I am empty

ah, like a forest clearing

open like a cup for the light

I've heard the wound

is the place where it enters

bright on the barren earth

too late for us

Scour the flesh

scrape the rot away

leave what's left

whether or not it can move

on its own

Was it power to call the wind,

or just coincidence

that you cried out aloud

when the storm was rising up?

Read some sign in the leaves

the arrangement of scattered bones

the cry of a witless bird

the position of its broken corpse

tell me everything

I was blind before

I was blind to it all

The scar pulls at my skin

tearing, burning

the omnipresent flaw

a gaping void no more

salt sharp on the air

skin bare to the water

not a thing we've built

here deserves to last

no monument for men like us

I can see it shining overhead

even with my eyes gone

no matter what else you take

Come knit this scattered prayer

into a new order

maybe this time, this door,

this new branch in the road

will lead you somewhere

anywhere at all

I fall behind, until I'm gone

in a mist of white

I don't belong among you

and I can no longer see

in the distance