we go by dark stairways
to the vaults of your soil
and with glyphs
mark the walls of caves –
we intone your scripts,
hold them close in our hearts –
for you speak texts of merit, of the arcane
in voices of an austere harmonic –
visiting sometimes as blighted religious
shuffling darkly in fields
sometimes as fire wheels
spinning hot sour truths
sometimes as seers of rigour
intoning dour mottos
sometimes as silent mysteries
ripened with the epynean
turning your heads towards us,
taking us in –
and us?
no more the beleaguered