Of Distant Worlds my Heart Would Speak
( thoughts of a ~ burning woman ~ Sha'Tara)
Of time, I cannot even speak
for truthfully, it is a meaningless measure
from then until now, how would we account it?
Of space, what can I say
of the parsecs we fled across, then re-crossed
ever searching for the ones we lost?
But of tears, though uncounted, uncountable
of those, yes, I could weave a tale indeed
for the ice of your comets is made of those.
The great sundering, how did it all begin?
What dark shadow, what unholy terror
suddenly swept throughout the outer worlds?
How innocent we were then; how unprepared
for such things to emerge from friendly space!
They came, first a vanguard, Others, friends,
so we thought for we knew of nothing else.
Into the minds of the weaker ones they entered
and there sowed fear, deceit, lies; covetousness.
We saw ourselves then, no longer beautiful.
We learned to hate, oh, so well, so utterly
but Them we did not hate, not then, not yet:
we feared and worshipped for we sensed their power.
Then came the Masters, and we served these from fear
for they were ever clothed in living flame.
We gave them our lands and they took our children
and so many were those we never saw again.
We swore allegiance to them; they taught us war
and skilled we became at shaping weaponry;
at bearing arms; and at killing? Masters in our own right.
In our fevered minds we saw shining, spinning worlds
and all we could think was, Go! Conquer them, enslave,
for the Lords want them as jewels for their crowns
and if we do not, they will wear our bones instead.
We did as we were bid, we flew the ships, we fought the wars;
we conquered, slaughtered, made ourselves rulers
on worlds that once had been our nighttime stars.
But their hunger nothing could sate
and their oppression became too heavy to bear.
We begged release, claimed we had served long
and served well, that we had earned our rest.
We asked to be returned to our world: how they laughed
to see us beaten, gloating over our despair upon learning
our world had been destroyed to make the weapons.
We turned our faces from these terrible Masters then
and walked away to our certain doom
for we knew they would never stop demanding more
of what we once so willingly gave without exception.
We knew they would come after us and if we did not fight
we would become as those we had enslaved in pits and mines.
Then we heard the voices of the lost ones
coming as it were from the forgotten outer worlds;
the voices of our children, the voices of our mates and mothers
a universal cry of woe we could not turn away from.
Instead, in rage we turned upon the Masters as one
and the fires of our struggles lit up space as Northern Lights
at times illuminates this planet's nighttime skies.
Came our final inevitable defeat and we fled, hiding in the darkness,
in the dreadful emptiness of unknown space and there, singly,
we sang a song. A song filled with so much woe and suffering
when it echoed among the frozen wastes,
these bled diamond tears into the void.
Not so much a place or space; not so much a time;
but a great loss yet to be made right.
And so we search, even today, even here,
and one by one we find the lost ones, we find you;
though no longer do you cry for you were seduced
by space, by time, and to you remains little, if any,
remembrance of distant worlds. Just empty words;
your thoughts, earth-bound, the graffiti of life.
Bookmarks
Share
Print
Save