Home

I run. I was born in the dawn, Pale child of the sun, Like my father before me Holding ash in my lungs, Like my mother, my sister, And their pyroclast veins, Until I tasted the ocean And the salt sang my name. So I ran. I ran to the north, To the emerald fields, To the bogs and the heather Of a land wounded deep, Where the streams are elegies, Where the mountains lament Their sons and their daughters Lives heedlessly spent. I heard songs on the marshes, So sweet that I drowned Under rains that fell endless And soaked through the ground. But the words were not mine, And I could not speak Their odes to the heartless Their requiem of peat. So I ran. To the north, to the north, To the cold, to the dark, Where longitude ends, Where maps have no mark. A roar in the oceans, A whisper in the woods. There is something here Just barely understood. In the clawing peaks, Across ravenous ice, In the furious rivers, In the cinderglow night, There is something waiting At the edges of sight And