8,000 years by a river mouth,

Split in two by a lion’s roar –

A hunter in hiding from the cold.

The roots plowed and plunged,

Make way for the harvest of silver fields.

Winter’s refrain, Time came with her scythe

Tending to her garden grove.

Time eroded and erased

Like the wave to the shore canters to a stop.

Stone to bronze to silver to gold –

The fisherman reaps, the stable cleared

And churches born from a pilgrim’s hand.

Three kings by her bedside, three for a crown,

The bad plague broken by a morning chorus.

Black birds sent overhead

In a thundering wave,

Dig a grave and build again.

From outer shores a melting ice,

And the city, brightly gleaming

In her oil dew, sky-kissed

With grey obelisk.

Another fever bursts

As we clear back to our hearth.

The city remains and speaks

Awake, o awake,

Like the hunter to his river land

And hear the mourning dove caw

Amen! Amen!