---

Once gaily painted

And awash in joyful

Rites and the blood

Giving warmth to the slumbering crowds

The wise man who is not wise

Sits and broods

And dreams of the hills of youth

The glowing gold of wind-dancing wheat

And the embracing shade of verdant oaks

And he knows that the memory

Is a falsehood

Born of the batterings of the present

Merely a chimera of what should have been

A balm for the litany of regrets

Left unerringly in his wake

Like in any other

And the anchorite dreams

He dreams a shaman carving blood unto

Darkened cavern ribs

Whilse shadows dance

To the ecstatic rythms

Of the Pacan.

He dreams of pages of gossamer and spider web

Whose words will not survive their altercation back to dust

And of words that moulder in

Mustered ranks

In endless volumes in endless Maesoleums

Whose foundations are the tide of the ocean

He dreams of deep rivers of tears

Of men as foolish as he

Who would spread their days

In the hopes of something more

As anchorites numberless and alone

Stare deep into the father sun

Whose death is but a promise

They cleanse their eyes

Wash time from their sight

With all else

And so become immortal