Piah Mater

Fallow Garden

Piah Mater


Born to this fallow garden
A gallery of ashes in a gilded cage
Bare of the mother vices
Belated like the crop of a sunken soil

Sworn to a frayed alliance
The tides of tradition so swiftly turn
Unlearned till our inner moths are
Summoned by the light of a foreign Sun

Falling away into the blue
Need I be the first to dive
To sever the ties and come on through
Departing the heartland’s wilderness

Should fate befall
These garden halls

Grown in this fallow garden
A fatalistic refuge in a maze of death
Allowed to this funeral stride yet
Silenced by the hand that bears the scythe

No, no escape in sight
No remnant of volition to seize
Trapped in this sinking island
Where all life begins and ends

Far and away in tides unknown
You might be the last to run
Fearing the burden lies on you
To harvest the endless sky

Empires fall
The silent spring dawns on earth