XXXVIII. The bandaged cardinal

In the third gyre of the Age of the Nascent Vaunthald:

Poisoned battalions ride as if on the ocean, awed by cold,
Suffering optical storms of transparent shadows
Magnified by the fierce temper of galling suns.
This sleep of opiates stretches its illusion on all sides,
No distant landmark breaks the monotony of its fragile glory.

The bandaged cardinal, born in the delicate ruin of a
Narrow six-story mansion, a bitter man with little regard
For marbled halls, abandons his beggarly church
And succors the remote expedition to the Byalkakeyl Zone.

A new vital energy is found in this itinerant branch
Of an ancient dissolute family. With rigor and purpose
A disquieted soul proves its genuine worth.

XXIX. To the wife of Goats-for-Horses

In the fourth gyre of the Age of the Sinquel Memorial:

An interpretation of a wild dream half-remembered:
The stones of the pit cast out of your stripped grave
Will be trodden under foot by your foolish beloved,
Who will emerge from middle bones and other books,
Waiting for the sky to break over lost deserts, lost islands.

Your husband's spirit-stirring drums will speak fear
To a god in a crest of birch-trees on a gray-clouded rock.
He brings forth the roaring of the seawall taken down,
Decimating a becalmed population steadfast in its refusal.

All those who have come before will ascend soundlessly
Upon the abdomen's third mute breath. Thus cleansed
And lightened, they fly to the Dome of Intermittency.
    

XXVIII. A battered limestone head

In the clauted (cleated?) gyre of the Age of the Good Remainder:

After feigning death, the secondary wife of the white
Moth pharaoh
Provides part of the key to unlock the wooden shrine
Of the mysterious occupant of the Dessoae tomb,
The faceless hero with a battered limestone head
Sheathed in pearls, his skull pierced with a gold arrow.

The noble face on the unstained coffin had been broken
In the notorious century following its discovery,
Needlessly mutilated by the hostile scrutiny of scholars
Seeking clues without the holy quality of mercy.

Forty minutes before an unequalled storm of rain and fire,
Earthquakes and gravity halted the discredited work;
Two upper spans of majestic high-ceilinged rooms
Were obliterated.
    

XIV. Falling salamanders on the wing

In the third gyre of the Age of Eichenblon's Crater

The bald standard-bearer marked by the severity
Of her injury:
She hides herself in manacles and loses the use
Of her hands
For the duration of the Winter of Stone Grass and
Brown Ice.
When the links of frost come unhinged,her grasp
Is re-built
By the clock-makers of a far city in the West.

While following a strange course through black mist
On the path to catastrophe on the mountain of shadows,
She is trusted by falling salamanders on the wing
With no gentle sentiment in their ponderous eyes.

An unseen hand digging between mortar and stone
Yields a ghost with a dragon's claw scribed upon his
Funereal bands.
The countersign is the facsimile of a scarlet ornament.

The Lorwolm Index

VI. A lunar wolf will emerge

In the third gyre of the Age of the Recluded Star:

After years of seclusion frequented by terrifying
Hallucinations,
The fugitive from the sky becomes the arcane priest
Stirring mad dreams in the younger son
Of the saturnine mogul.
Torture, paralysis and remorse are the gifts
Of the gaudy Moccawmune
Who speaks of truth and patriots with a ferret's tongue.

When machines believe in cold ghosts,
From the depths of a maze, a lunar wolf will emerge,
Followed by a coarse terrapin with two legs of lead
And two legs of silver,
Bringing a map from the echidtors
Of the diminishing moon.

Strange objects cross the unnatural verge
Into the alkali soul of the immaculate triangle,
Shattering the turning point of a serene world.

V. An edictal bloodline is born

In the third gyre of the Age of the Glass Council:

An edictal bloodline is born: the poet Maogul-atoda
In the likeness of a daughter of the moon.
She recounts the sorrow of her long search
For the lake named Throat of Omaplar
And the headwaters of three major rivers.

The riven serpent unites before going to war.
Those of the unwavering earth will hold for their
Outcast prince,
Singing to their sacred lamps, plumes tied to their hair.
Those of the white lily will fall for the guardian churches.

Twelve oxen caparisoned with flowers, amber
And gold foil,
Kneel before an ornate dais crowned by an arrow
Of raw iron
Etched with fire and spoilt with thick pink rust.