Song of the Sage

[sandalwood]

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As Black Spider rests with none to impress,
The songstress arose with a rose on her dress,
When just passed the archway the dawn of an old day
Returned, having heard what the old one had to say.
Thought to be alone she cries and she moans,
When crows sing of growing back down to the widow,
Thus it occurs that she’d had observers,
While Morning, a murder and I’d overheard her.

Then the sun of a sudden, just beyond the horizon
Begun singing the Old One’s conundrum he’d sung him.
It goes:
When the black horses hairs are drawn o’er the steel,
The face on the lake is newly unveiled,
And found thee a downy feather abound with the
Tears bitter drowning the bird it had grounded,
Go beyond the Arch of Yonder to the Old One.

In the garden at night are impressions of light,
And Moon, when in bloom, spreads her feathers in flight.
When sunflowers cry as these thoughts come to light,
That they’d touch all the garden but never the sky.
And the wind all abillow ignites red and yellow,
The crows now are crooning, their voices like cellos,
And one heart did swoon at the youthful new moon,
And he knew by her glow that she felt something too.

That's when:
Black Spider told me that Crow every night,
Was holding, when lonely, the feather of white,
Which rest in my hand, having flown off with plans
To lay with his lady and never to land.
So I go beyond the Arch of Yonder to the Old One.

It’s said, the Old One, he hated those who mistranslated
His old tongue, which no one did go on debating.
This my mother taught me, but when he sat crossly,
The Old One just listened and allowed me to misspeak.
Domme veteris fidelis de semper,
But perfectly patient, he seemed without temper,
Said, ‘Still you are young now please hold your tongue,
And these words I sing now, may you always remember.’

And he sang:
The roses that grow on the bay of the Jordan
For bathing young ladies sing songs of post mortem,
But Glories that grow by the Moonlight grow gorgeous
And wither away in the soil that bore them.
Just beyond the Arch of Yonder so says the Old One.

And all this writ of the song of the sage,
A flower blooms late and it dies of old age,
The stem will be broken when first words are spoken,
And first petals fall only once they’ve been opened.

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