the journey man favoured a certain path his followers another

I

None was virgin to the earth yet both had some currency of truth as a confusion of ways beckoned them

The charge of the leader men a slender lad not ten summers long in the valley of his life nor ten autumns yet as a guarantee of his future

Spoke out loud and commanded the ragtag tribe before him like felons in chains their grisly eyes met his in an assignation of hope and scarcely blinked for fear they would miss a vital clue their lives bartered for such meagre measures of survival or death

They left their despair at the side of the reverse road of their transits as if they cared for no other prospect in time discarded like the jerked carcasses of a beast best left to decay to tempt to health ageing vultures in case old cataracted eyes from forgotten skies would remember some vivid imagery of past victories and leaven a way to the future

II

There were none

III

They agreed as the chatter of the desperate that a better fortune was gained by following the journey man who despite his youth seemed a reliable valet of their future

Soon they were relieved at the sight of a crystal stream of blue waters which gave up all its salves and slaked their thirst and buoyed their spirits yet failed to guide their transit its course as complicated as life itself

Between the journey man the boy and their desperate trail of men attached like the tail of a serpentine ghost each with its own patron Saint’s prayers extinguished by days of hardship and nights deprived by any facsimile of rest becoming a light yet an elusive one of no proven worth

IV

A tribe of vandals of little morality tracked the scattered men their fragile ways and his charge and accomplices and plotted rivers of defeat. Their reputation fearsome drowning even their strongest adversaries in blood they were so adroit in dealing death

Their vantage point a single blue mountain streaming weird epiphanies behind an incongruous sky of pink laced by fragile clouds impermanent as breath itself

Its name anonymous and fearsome yet held close as a secret in some dark play its outcome unknown as the plot escaped its scribe

V

Dawn broke as it does for the living and the dead without discrimination, and the journey men re-examined their options once plentiful in the morning of their lives now few as shards of light at night are confiscated by dark princes in their palaces of wintered dreams

The leader of the vandals themselves appeared stealthy as a ghost of unexplained provenance and challenged the assemblage of worn men their energy spent as time itself. He spoke a strange language yet one as universal as music. He seemed to offer a compromise. A merger of their forces or an annihilation of both

They fell in behind the leader of the vandals the two tribes of escapees like a mermaid with a doublet of tails joined at sea the insignia of Byzantium itself

Stronger now than before the strands of travellers swirled their way across the sky as a woman knits a shroud and waits for news of her betrothed then unknits her work every night to ensure she remains faithful beyond the lust of suitors

VI

A man and his consort transgress the past their climax a matter of history, they make no intrusion upon the scene of vagrants of lesser fortune depicted in verses gone and lost as the last tribe of Israel

Dawn broke a second time as fragile lumens cast their spell to grasp the hand of warriors astride history as the four horsemen of the apocalypse execute the day and usher in the night