For the first time,
Stricken by thirst
…And blind…
A young girl emerged from a dark captivity
And stumbled headlong into the jaws of a rich and rapturous city
CONSUMED by light.
A light as opulent as the gold which it acted to illuminate:
A policy of the “Great” warden, Ciro...
Whose callous mandate stated that no trees should be allowed to grow
Within the walls of the region.
With all the forests torn, it freed him
To covet his plundered wealth without stealth's covering eyelid,
So that every jewel and sculpted idol
Glittered with the unrelenting reflected fire of the Sun,
Like ornamental flames bedizening some roofless civic solarium.
Blades of heat rumbled in the sand,
And invaded the young girl's consciousness with suffocating hands...
...And, as she slowly ebbed into a syncope,
A faded groan edged in single beats about her:
It was the laboured breath
Of a lonely spinster,
Aged, yet walking wearily
Towards the waterside
To drink, and rinse her clothes -
Her only cooling comforts
In these days which closed
Her journey between life and death.
…A moment passed in a silent rest,
Until…
Familiar darkness wound around the young girl's waking eyes,
But what she felt was different:
In brief abatement, the heat lay held aside,
And, in its place, an umbra coolly shrouded her predicament.
Its caster, standing arms akimbo, was a curious young boy,
And to him no greater joy came than from the task of answers sought;
‘Always asking,’ once taught his father
‘Is both the fuel and mastery of thought.’
So, with this in mind, he asked her:
‘Why are you lying furled and frightened across the ground?’
On hearing this sound,
She lightly unclasped
The fabric of her uncertain whisper:
‘I’m afraid I may have lost my way…’
And, through the blackness of her personal void, it fell…
To twist,
And whirl,
And fade…
‘Well…look around.’
The boy insisted,
Catching that ambivalent cascade in motion;
The opposing palm of his reply
Held outstretched and shimmering against the shadow-flow.
  He calmly posed the notion
That, so her way could again be found,
She should picture a searching arm
Linking the wayward loop of her location
To those famous, sparkling landmarks
That mapped each inch inside those gates
With which that desert metropolis was bound.
The girl reached out, with spoken fingers…
The worded tips cracked and broken by doubt…
And twelve years of dreaded bleakness
Spent chained down under the clenched fists
Which were bolted on
To stand gravely upon
The wrists of her lingering incarcerators:
‘Thank you,
For being kind…
And for the guide with which you try to help me…
But…I fear…I cannot use it…
For…in truth…
I cannot see.’