The Guide's Lament

 

Past the vain lights
where all insects go crawling,
speeding to their curious deaths,
  fatally enchanted,
we restrain the best of our hopes.

Past the last circle
of civilizing wires
stirring eddies in the grim grid,
  beloved machines,
we dance our best ideas.

My love's tangle of vengeance
and rejection hovers against the moon
whose vendettas the tide speaks.

It is quiet
where we display our crafts
woven past the last ruts'
  traces in the sage,
further than the buyers travel.

When the town grows
into the wilderness, already
shall our work be ruins,
  majestically fallen,
mysteries in the sand uncertain.

My love and I are strangers fixed
on the wrong stars, given to an age
out of earshot, past reflection.

Past motors of comfort
who eat the hearts of mountians
we lay our aching stage,
  protagonist blessing
each eagle length from the planned sanctuary.

In summer fortune
sloth hails the pure fast.
Tokens of the sun played in shadow,
  pacified forest,
lever us past the unleavend word.