I walked among the garden, passing by where long ago you once planted daisies—how those buds once bloomed. I walked a-ways farther until I came to a hearth, torn asunder. Its warmth gone cold and gray. The air about the garden is murky and slick, and I can feel it hang low in the snood of the evening mist. Up ahead I see where the path narrows, and like a siren it lasciviously calls out to me. It lies barren beneath the wet winter wind that blows restive. I know that it knows the way not. The wind sets the tawny leaves to caper and dance this way and that. And laconically they cross atop the worn-out grass. The sun now set save for the trailing penumbras, that set ominous among the darkening clouds like floating tundras. I catch a chill and realize for the first that I am out here alone; among the ancient pillars in the shadowy garden that I have for so long known. Why is it that year after year I must return here, is it to visit you, set things straight, or is it to recover a thing I might have lost to the atavistic gait of chaos and time? I know not—it is not for me to know. But, out here among the spectral shadows I am returned to the primordial. The nonpareil decay of clay and dust.