the road in was mean
with its winding and
slithering silhouette
like the tail of the
hundred-year-old rat

a forgotten fortress
witness of warring
standing on its last legs
the moss fuzzing over
the walls like a disease

the empty throne sitting
in its grand red robes, is it
stained with dye, or blood?
only the long-dead king or
the hundred-year-old rat knows.

in the hole by the throne
there lives a rat. the one
hundred-year-old rat that
has seen conquest and contest
succeed and succession

and when the one
hundred-year-old rat
comes to pass on
no one will know what
has happened here.