Questing

And so, and so

And so must we

Trip at the brink - eternity!

Who shivers at this bleak abyss

As one moves forward,

So the next.

 

Down long, and down

And deep down went

‘Til horses, men and torches spent,

One calls a halt to seek his lack

But on we travel - none turn back.

There is no way, for such as we

Go forward - back - eternally.

 

A hundred years at every step,

A thousand caught between each breath

As on we tread, the darkest deep

Man could imagine - caught in sleep.

No rest for us, though, tumbled years

Catch at our beards and turn to tears.

 

Nor can age weary, our decline

Is one of self outside of time.

Each journey is the same, and lies

By the deep pools, and the dark tides

Where the doubts live in their tall spires

To hide the truth from a world of liars.

 

For in us all are journeys yet

That we must take, before the fretted

Loose long web of time may spin

To turn outside us what was in;

To draw our darkness out from throats

That cry at night one long, high note.

 

And there is no way back for me

Who left my comrades, carelessly;

They seek the doubts I left unwritten

In a deep well, by a dark midden -

As deep, as dark as I would be

Did I not quest them endlessly.

 

David Lewis Paget