Today is your birthday, spindle-top maid.
Another year of desolate bridges.
Bridges by us, once believed to be true,
now laid to rest in mineralised brine.

Though my desires have long since faded,
small town streets will forever sing your name,
calling, calling, for youth and infant love.
Time may have set, but as with Giza stone

you lay in evidence of what has been.
And now, in years progressed, I tend to this,
my page. Some hungover apology,
for cruelness, that in ignorance, I wreaked.

For, though in my life there is ugliness,
and evil now apparent in this world;
I have learnt through experience, virtue
of kindness, of careful tread upon land.

Oh, mother of Horus, and Christian slave,
you bought me devotion in time of aid.
I'm calling, calling, in meekness undue,
for your sandstone likeness to hold in place.

With time comes erosion, African wind,
to scorch at the kindness, held to your breast.
So, in fear of forced blindness, cynical
waste; I mumble in this dirt-kissed prayer.

God of knowledge, oh God of braying flock,
bring to me your scripture, word of Thoth.
All so I can deliver, all so I
can sing; this tuneless ode of my redress,

this humbled hope for spring.