Five Ages in a World

I'm across the Green River,
You can look far down below on a little forward-hovering, blue and white St. Dominic figure
Through certain clear breaks in the brown poplar forest

I'm across the Twilight River,
Away from the tower kingdoms, and frozen stations

And The Soprano Soloist Sings: Ave Ave AAA - Agape Troh Oh - Sanctoriuuum Luuumen

When I was inside the Great City I watched a trackless white trail blow flat from a wide clementine pyramid
In front of a firetruck blue sky - a pristine expanse chipped by a crystal fingernail the size of a sphinx
Then the pyramid withdrew slowly behind and between the stone steel buildings
Suddenly to the South, and to the left a little, grew a sheer wall of asphyxiation,
Blood green palm leaves soaking in fogsweat
And there appeared in faded textures
Tropical Stonehenge, Gregorian Swamp Streams in the basement of a triple canopy, the arch of a tomb drowned in the vastness of the cliffside, carvings of earrings and temples, totems of all things

And The Baritone Choir Sings: Oxyrhynchus Hymnus Tertillian - Tridentine Ritti - Neume Veylluum

I stayed in the Hinterland City for more than a decade,
Even as I first arrived I could tell it was the gateway to the borders by the look of the rain running off the steel sheet rooftops in the waterfront market.
Just over the hills, another wide open country burning in a fury of the sun, dreams of mudfire and missionary walls, warfare, men against titans, Chaos and The Loud Thunderer.
I had not gone a mile when I turned around and saw that behind me lay nothing but a field of hard navyblack coral pockmarked by mounds of burnished sulfurgold and stretching to the horizon.
Sometimes I would be trampling along and feel the great release of the relief of a dead man
There would be nothing but the rushing forms of the Dead Hours, and an endless luminescent melon patch.

And The Three Tenor Choirs Sing: O-O-O-O - Muuuundi Domihna - Vehherbum Ecce Kier A

There at the heavy-hung enshadowed clearing, on a mudpad final resting place,
I heard and saw with naked eyes a great hippopotamus snort and suck for deeper and deeper thrashes of vanishing air
I felt I was part of everything I saw.
On still again I went, leaving another marker behind
And on again went the scenery, deeper and deeper into the last layer of reverence in the last layer of darkness and fear

And The Thirty-Three Alto Choirs Sing: Vuh Vuhnuh Bonampak - Vuh Vuhnuh Bonampak - Vuh Vuhnuh Bonampak

The last curve in the sandy palm-walled jungle trench poured out a delta of lime-orange shoreline tidepools that streaked on to every horizon
They each harbored a long well of jagged lightning that zapped across the surface in erratic intervals,
Ten waves out, a fresh plaque inscribed with a dedication to Chapman's Homer rests firmly set into the jutting hedge of the reef
Suddenly four simultaneous sails appeared:
A black triangle in the East
A yellow triangle in the West
A blue triangle in the South
A white triangle in the North
The cobalt coral began to glare and gleam in a frenzy that struck up a shrill clamor
And a string of spidersilk spun the bent path of a dainty little meteorite, in three day-long stages, and at the end a smoldering pebble lay embedded in the words of the plaque on the reef
The East sail had grown the size of a monstrous cloud

And The Sixty-Six Bass Choirs Sing: Maudgalyayanna - Djamas - Deoarien - Deoarien - Deoarien

The South Star has covered up the North
The constellations are disentangled

I am launched, faster than is possible,
Through a focused line inside a beacon.

The Black Ocean bears my sleeping island

And The Seven-Hundred And Seventy-Seven Soprano Choirs Sing: Oxyrhynchus Hymnus Tertillian - Tridentine Ritti - Neume Veylluum