The World of Echoes

The World of Echoes
By David Cortez

To dust! To dust!
A fine mist, rust,
it paints like covered sheet,
and leaves a naked path behind,
if chance, a finger meet.

Oh dust! This dust,
I knew it once,
a recognized debris,
of standing walls and decor'd halls
hath change come errantly.

We dust, we dust,
of grand repose,
long past have taken sleep,
and long since stirred, perpetual,
this ember in us creep.

Shed dust, shed dust!
in crack and flume,
all shadowed digit curl,
as once again the ember glows,
move gears, in clockwork world.

We rise, we rise,
the ground a sea
of writhing metal forms,
as life anew, breathed life into,
dead metal eyes transform.

To war! To War!
We march in flame,
and all around, more dust,
behind us, Time be-wing-ed, fly's,
for forward on, we must.

And leave a carcass world behind,
and so convert to dust,
as haunted chanting stir of ghosts
sing on, "to dust, TO DUST!"