Chapter 1: The Earth

What stars had risen for the birth of him
had long since sat obscured behind the maw
of yellowseed and black that was the Sky.
For time beyond the Exodus of man
was left behind, the same as Mother Earth,
and all She was, about Them now, beheld
a thousand monuments to all They were-
As ribbon-flesh suggests the pain of Fire.

The Fool awoke, and all the motors of
his body whirr’d to taste their newfound life.
His apertures of eyes beheld the ruin
of a shop, once grand, now set in rust,
and through the sunder’d girders spill’d
the sickly light where hid above, The Sun
had set to clawing at the Sky: as though
it seem’d to have for centuries untold.

From out the ruin trod The Fool, and Lo,
a desert stretch’d beyond and far from sight,
though smatterings of iron spires stood
and quickly he had found a path toward
that glimmer, left by leaden feet in past.
Before the first of them he’d reach’d there sat
a creature, doubl’d over under cloth,
whose face was hid, but called out to The Fool:

“Hark! A newborn soul would grace the sands.
Then truly have the Gates of Heaven shut,
and lost are we whose keeper is alone.
So Welcome, Patriselen, to the Lost.”
The Fool regarded it, then spoke, and all
the fibers of his voice, a whisper, rang:
“Divine me not, ye metal-heap, for
surely Heaven lay before me yet.”

A cackle then erupted from the crone,
and pulling back the cloth it show’d a form
of metal, blinking lights and wires adorn’d
in gold and silver symbols of Occult.
“A Fool as true to grip the hearts of all
who hope to see this Limbo gone! A thing
that sees a beast in its reflection, and
says unto himself, ‘Then where is me?’

Do ye not heave your breast, yet ill respire?
Do ye not hear the whirring of your corpse?
Cast thine eyes from Heaven, child and see-
What man has made of man during your rest.”
The Fool regarded both his hands, and though
they felt as e’er they had, the digits all
were lead and silver, clicking as they turn’d
and in his iron chest, there nothing beat.

“Now gone are us-” the Crone relay’d, “And now
the few that Man rejects are here, to aid
the ruler-construct’s will so guided by
the stars, now lost to us but known to it.
Machine! They call it. Born of man yet wise
beyond our humble lot, and privy to
the planet-paths for us behind the veil-”
And lifted he a claw to bless The Sky.

The Fool becried the ugly creature’s word,
guffawed in layered hissing set in tin:
“The Stars! The Planets! Oh what folly fell
to Earth when all of Man embark’d to leave 
by engineering so pristine of rot
the likes of which this thing would worship true.
Suppose the Sun in Libra caus’d the sea
to dry and strangle all those mortal coils!”

The Crone arose and cast his shawl aside,
the gears within his chest grew hot and turn’d:
“A Fool! A Fool at last to stumble blind
through all the seething Hell befallen Him!
A Fool of water-soul and rising fire-sign!
The Gods! The God! So gone of us yet here
they play and curse the hearts of men, or that
which gilded, thinks again beneath the hidden sun!

“A Fool so far from Eden here would curse
the will of The Machine when all to us
the Sky is blank, and so it is with fate!
Begone, then, Fool! Begone and seek
the lone Machine and question it in lieu
of such a loathesome soul as I!” He sang
and kick’d and chas’d The Fool until he left-
into the Kingdom-Earth devoid of God.