The Etched City

We are the music makers
They say:
A million cities have fallen to dust
Grind, mill, grind
And join Mu and Lemur as corpses in the sand

I have not forgotten!
You’ve done nothing until you project it
Never! Never! Never!
would my totem give me a sign

While the gods laugh
I turn and walk into my home, the city, a man
We have all become legends, I think

The song had been young then and they had all been charmed by it
Where do you go now?
To the dragonheaded door, to the gateway of the moon

Dawn shelter us from the dark
Work with words cannot save us
Another threat is lurking in the night

Vain and tasteless praise they recite;
To a bloodless victory
Of a dead man
The Etched City

Is this web woven and wound of entrails?
Or the tyrannous secrets of time?
The axis of the world
The red-robed man
Here all things ceased to be;

“The fool has come. Bind him fast”
What would become of you?
He could not get rid of his kind heart
“My father is dead” he had answered. “He was eaten by owls”
The stars shiver in sympathy

Isn’t living enough?
You see what you have done?
Wounded by stars and leaking shadow
They mean to grind us down, no matter the cost
A broken heart in the breast of the world
A bit of brain in a broken basket
The world is a fire of sacrifice

He has forgotten how much faster it is to travel alone
Brother, have we lost the trail?
You would lose yourself in the labyrinth

What do we mean?
Is there a pattern?
Teach me to make myself
To punish us

I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost,
we sheep must go where we are led
Death is the only sincerity
And he died for me