We see but cannot see We hear but cannot hear What we face with our senses is the purest illusion Transmissions from a realm of the unknowable All is filtered through the withered substrate Of perceptions worn thin like gauze Rotting through as a death-shroud Stained with corpse-dust When the last of us ceases to trust All that is perceived, all that is known All that is experienced Where then for a mind that cracks free of its moorings? To the maze of memory we thus retreat Inwards and downwards To the fog of time long dead And the straining patterns that fail to contain Things once known THings once seen and felt and feared and ignored Once again, we turn away and deny Echoes reverberate in a chaotic mire of Unreasoning Again... and again... etched in decaying blood Reverberating in flesh and spoiled By the crushing, glacial cascade of the hourglass We lie to ourselves Crushed by the benediction of our own Weakness As we age and fail, Tendrils of betrayal a final prison We lie to ourselves