gentle fingertips touch the ivory keys
of a piano and play a sad song.
a voice that rings true,
with the clarity of crystal,
sings softly.

i sit by the fire, alone,
and stare into the flames there,
watching the logs that burn
into smoke and ash
and nothingness.

she beckons to me but i do not come,
for broken reveries are always irrepairable
and tonight--tonight--tonight,
while the snow drops softly outside my window,
i cannot be won back from the memories.

she strikes up again, and sings and plays,
and the notes echo into my head.
a log crackles and snaps and falls;
a sunburst of sparks--
i feel the momentary pain of their existence deep in me.

the shadows on the wall are all laughing,
but together we pay them no mind.
i with my brandy and she with her wine,
a tandem pair,
we play hosts to the secrets of time.

she plays a song of the peasants,
and i feel their lives in the melody.
a pang of something, fear or longing,
strikes me suddenly,
and i tremble.

for the few that are remembered, a thousand are lost--
cast from history, overlooked and ignored.
i sympathize,
and this duty is mine:
to remember them in time.

songs of the rich and of the poor,
of the morally bankrupt and more,
fill this warm little room.
she plays her songs and sings sweet words,
and leaves me to these solitary reflections.

memories of lovers and their visions
fill my mind, and my heart aches and burns
with their passion and bravery.
i long as they long and hope as they hope
for their lover's embrace--that healing touch of humanity.

the Play of Time has indeed
perhaps the only ever-changing cast list;
men who seek power, who lust and kill,
women who love and heal, and tug the strings,
i feel overwhelmed as these my partner sings.

the music dies away, and i hear the creak
of her chair as she stands slowly.
i raise my tired eyes from the fire and blink.
the pain awakens and seizes me from within,
the aching of a mind and body taxed to wit's end.

her arms slip 'round my shoulders, and she whispers in my ear,
consoling me.
she knows well this eternal ache.
i stand, and hand-in-hand, we leave this place
of endless reverence, and walk into the snow.

she stops me and i face her, and she looks up into my eyes.
her own are tired, drained; the work is hard,
this charge from the gods.
she leans up to me, and i duck my head,
and we kiss.

in this moment, we are fully aware of each other.
she feels from me the burden of the task i complete,
and i from her understand the meaning of the music.
we love like any of those we remember could.

i forbid myself that most vulnerable display of emotion,
for what do i need it?
but the forgotten are innumerable, and we are only two...

ten millennia and only twenty tears
but tonight the twenty-first.

tonight, my twenty-first.