Enkomputiligis Don HARLOW

Elegy for a Fallen Mage

by Daniel Treesong Burke

Ages before this long dying I watched
As a girl-small princess, dark and intense,
Rode out from low grey walls to remind her folk
Of those old ways they had begun to lose.

So much their queen she became in following years,
They took her at times for the earthly Goddess she served.
So the dead-God priests doomed her death:
The iron arm of Rome grasped and crushed.

She died screaming, having watched her children die.
Reborn in cold hatred, she fought and sank
Through death-rimmed lives that spanned the church's power
And left undying memories as spirit's scars.

In our unmagic time she found no balm.
Our pain-mad paradise of empty lives
Could give no memory of the ancient ways
Which alone could mend the age-long hurt.

Never healed, she tore at quenchless pain.
Consumed by self like Death's hearthstone fire,
She prayed forgotten gods that in the end
This flame might sink and bear no phoenix curse.