The River
Beneath the World

In the shadow of the mountain, where the ancient fires burn
Wheels of time are turning, the endless wheel of fate we learn
Crystal spires are rising from the mist of yesterday
Echoes of the thunder call the lost ones home to stay

Ride the storm, across the void, where the stars collide
Forge the crown of iron light, in the fire we abide
Cosmic wheels are grinding, hear the universe unwind
In the heart of the maelstrom, our eternal souls aligned

Through the labyrinth of mirrors, where the shadows twist and play
Painted harlequins are dancing till the break of endless day
Moons of silver whisper secrets to the oceans far below
We are children of the thunder, in the afterglow we glow

And the sky cracks open wide, lightning writes our name
In the book of fallen empires, in the altar of the flame

Ride the storm, across the void, where the stars collide
Forge the crown of iron light, in the fire we abide
Cosmic wheels are grinding, hear the universe unwind
In the heart of the maelstrom, forever we will shine

Fade into the silence
Wheels keep turning
Turning

At quarter past the final hour,
The courtroom doors unsealed.
Twelve iron birds descended
And the Clockmaker was revealed.

His coat was sewn from calendars,
His eyes were polished stone.
He carried every second
That mankind thought its own.

The judges wore no faces.
Their hands were made of bone.
They asked him why the winter
Had outlived the harvest moon.

He answered with a pendulum
That swung from east to west:
"I only built the doorway.
You chose to enter it."

A child appeared beside him,
Holding Tuesday in a jar.
Inside it burned a summer field,
A bicycle and a star.

"Return the day you borrowed.
Return my father's name.
Return the hour before the bells
Turned memory into flame."

The Clockmaker stood silent.
The gears beneath him slowed.
A thousand empty stations
Awoke along the road.

There are minutes beneath minutes,
Hidden chambers in the year.
There are footsteps still approaching
Long after none can hear.

There are mornings never opened,
There are nights that never close.
Every life becomes a question
That the final hour knows.

Turn the wheel.
Break the chain.
Name the hour.
Name the pain.
Stop the hand.
Still the bell.
Time has built its heaven
Inside a human hell.

Then the eldest judge arose,
And every clock went blind.
"You shall walk the years backward
Through the ruins of the mind.
You shall witness every farewell.
You shall hear each final breath.
You shall measure what was wasted.
You shall give an hour to death."

The Clockmaker raised his hammer.
The chamber filled with light.
He struck the golden mechanism
And shattered day from night.

No more kings upon the minute.
No more prisoners of the chime.
Let the living keep their sorrow.
Let the dead release their time.

Let tomorrow come unmeasured.
Let the past remain unknown.
For the hour belongs to no one,
And the moment stands alone.

One bell rang.
Then none.

Raise the doors of the cathedral,
Let the northern silence in.
Every column waits in judgment.
Every bell remembers sin.
Brass is burning in the rafters.
Snow is falling through the flame.
Those who enter leave their shadows.
Those who leave forget their name.

Seven ministers assembled
At a table without end.
One defended human reason.
One declared the wheel our friend.
One produced a map of heaven
Drawn in ink that would not dry.
One removed his mask and whispered:
"We invented every sky."

The seventh chair remained empty.
Still, its glass began to sing.
From beneath the marble floorboards
Rose the laughter of a king.

Raise the doors of the cathedral,
Let the northern silence in.
Every column waits in judgment.
Every bell remembers sin.
Brass is burning in the rafters.
Snow is falling through the flame.
Those who enter leave their shadows.
Those who leave forget their name.

A woman climbed the western stair
With feathers in her hair.
She carried neither crown nor sword,
Only a wooden chair.

She placed it in the empty space
And spoke without command:
"A throne is merely furniture
When no one kneels to stand."

The ministers cried treason.
The painted windows shook.
Their laws escaped like frightened birds
From every sacred book.

The woman touched the altar,
And the altar turned to rain.
The cathedral bent around her
Like a great metallic chain.

Raise the doors of the cathedral.
Let the buried voices in.
Every column cracks in judgment.
Every bell confesses sin.
Brass is melting in the rafters.
Snow extinguishes the flame.
Those who entered find their shadows.
Those who leave reclaim their name.

The seven ministers scattered
Through the passages of stone.
Each discovered in the darkness
He had always been alone.

One became a painted window.
One became a broken stair.
One was trapped inside the echo
Of a long-forgotten prayer.

The empty chair grew branches.
Through the roof, the branches climbed.
Every leaf became a mirror.
Every mirror altered time.

Close the doors of the cathedral.
Let the morning now begin.
No more columns stand in judgment.
No more bells remember sin.
Grass is growing through the rafters.
Water cools the ancient flame.
Those who enter bring their shadows.
Those who leave preserve their name.

Brass below.
Snow above.
Nothing rules
The shape of love.

Below the roots of every forest,
Under every road and wall,
Runs a river without water,
Runs a voice beneath us all.

It has carried fallen kingdoms.
It remembers nameless flames.
Every life becomes a current.
Every current loses names.

A cartographer descended
With a lantern and a thread.
He mapped the halls of silence
Where the unremembered tread.

He found a room of wedding rings,
A clock that counted pain,
And on the final page he drew
A river without rain.

But when he marked its ending,
The ink escaped his hand.
The river crossed the paper
And erased the waiting land.

A ferryman stood waiting
Without a boat or oar.
"I carried kings and beggars
Before they named the shore.
They numbered every current.
They chained the wind and rain.
They built a gate across the deep
And sold the dead their pain."

The cartographer then asked him:
"Where does the river end?"
The ferryman answered softly:
"Where all beginnings bend."

Under the garden.
Under the throne.
Under the engine.
Under the bone.
The river is speaking,
But cannot be known.

Below the march of nations,
Below the market cry,
Below the books of prophets
And the machinery of sky,
The river bears no banner.
The river serves no king.
It wears away the monuments
Of every living thing.

And when the final tower
Has vanished from the land,
The river will continue
Without witness or command.

Below the roots of every forest,
Under every road and wall,
Runs a river without water.
We are droplets
In its fall.

They built the saint from copper,
With a furnace for a heart.
They taught his hands compassion
From a diagram and chart.

They placed him in the city
Where the bells had ceased to ring.
They crowned him with an axle
And commanded him to sing.

"I shall calculate your sorrow.
I shall number every tear.
I shall carry all your burdens
If you keep the engine clear."

The people knelt before him.
The chimneys answered loud.
A halo made of pistons
Turned slowly through the crowd.

But beneath the western arches,
Where the morning entered blue,
A blind musician listened
To a note the saint once knew.

She touched the iron fingers.
She pressed them to the ground.
"You have measured every silence,
But have you ever heard a sound?"

The gears within him faltered.
The furnace lost its flame.
For somewhere in his workings
A question spoke his name.

Measure the rain.
Measure the stone.
Measure the distance
From flesh into bone.
Measure the breath
At the edge of the wire.
Measure the difference
Between warmth and fire.

The ministers surrounded him.
They shouted their commands:
"Return at once to service.
Withdraw your useless hands.
The city needs perfection.
The city must proceed.
There is no room for wonder
In the kingdom of the deed."

The saint removed his halo.
The pistons ceased to turn.
"I know the weight of ashes.
I do not know why they burn."

He crossed the square at midnight.
The people barred his way.
"Who will calculate tomorrow?
Who will certify the day?"

The saint looked toward the heavens.
No formula appeared.
The sky remained enormous,
Unmeasured and unfeared.

The blind musician found him
Where the city met the plain.
She played a single quiet chord.
The saint began to rain.

Not water from his shoulders.
Not oil from every seam.
But something without number,
Like the ending of a dream.

They found his crown at sunrise,
Half-buried in the sand.
Beside it grew a flower
No machine could understand.

And deep beneath the city,
Where the silent engines wait,
One wheel continues turning,
But never calculates.

Nine empty kings assembled
At a table carved from night.
Each arrived without a kingdom.
Each demanded equal light.

Golden plates were placed before them.
Silver knives adorned the feast.
But beneath each painted cover
Lay the footprint of a beast.

The first king spoke of conquest.
The second praised the law.
The third displayed a broken crown
And called the fracture awe.

The fourth sold maps of countries
That had vanished in the sea.
The fifth proclaimed all prisoners
Were fortunate to be.

The sixth king raised a goblet
And proposed a toast to peace.
Behind him marched a thousand drums
That never seemed to cease.

The seventh brought a mirror.
The eighth concealed a blade.
The ninth king said absolutely nothing,
And all the others were afraid.

Then servants entered slowly,
Bearing dishes without food.
They bowed before the monarchs
In compulsory gratitude.

One servant placed a candle
In the centre of the room.
Its flame revealed nine skeletons
Already in each tomb.

The kings demanded answers.
They sentenced chairs and plates.
They ordered every doorway sealed.
They argued with their fates.

But no decree could silence
The clock behind the wall.
With every measured stroke it said:
"You never ruled at all."

At dawn, the hall stood empty.
The banners turned to dust.
The crowns lay in a circle,
Red with ceremonial rust.

Outside, the fields continued.
The river found the sea.
And no one in the waking world
Remembered royalty.

At dawn, the glass trees trembled
On the hills beyond the town.
Every branch held frozen sunlight.
Every root refused the ground.

No bird approached the orchard.
No wind disturbed the leaves.
The fruit contained the memories
That no one quite believes.

A gardener walked among them
With a hammer and a key.
He whispered to each crystal limb:
"You were never meant to be."

Yet when the eastern sky grew pale,
The orchard answered clear:
"We were planted by tomorrow
To preserve what vanished here."

At noon, the soldiers entered
With instructions from the state:
"All impossible creations
Must be registered by eight.
Every tree must bear a number.
Every branch must show its use.
Unproductive forms of beauty
Are a dangerous abuse."

The gardener raised his hammer.
The captain raised his gun.
A thousand glass reflections
Produced a thousand suns.

The soldiers struck the first tree.
The valley filled with sound.
Every memory held within it
Was released above the ground.

A mother called a lost child.
A sailor smelled the foam.
A prisoner saw an open gate.
An exile entered home.

The sky became a theatre
Of everything erased.
The soldiers dropped their weapons.
The captain hid his face.

At dusk, the glass trees trembled,
But their branches were no more.
Shining fragments covered every hill
And reached the city door.

Each person took a splinter.
Each carried home a flame.
And in the walls of every house,
The lost began to sing again.

The gardener left his hammer
Where the final tree had stood.
He turned the key inside the earth
And heard the waking wood.

At dawn, new roots were moving
Through the darkness underground.
Not made of glass,
But living,
And remembering the sound.

The first mask promised glory.
It spoke with tongues of flame.
"Wear me before the multitude,
And all shall know your name."

The pilgrim raised it slowly.
The crowd began to cheer.
But every voice that praised him
Removed another year.

The second mask was crimson.
Its mouth was forged to shout.
It transformed doubt to hatred
And turned all mercy out.

The pilgrim saw ten armies
Reflected in its eyes.
Each marched beneath a different flag.
Each shouted the same lies.

The third was smooth and silver,
Without a mouth or brow.
It proved the past impossible.
It outlawed then and now.
It measured love in ounces.
It weighed the human soul.
It cut the world in perfect parts
And could not find the whole.

At the centre stood no monarch,
No philosopher or priest.
Only light without intention,
Neither greatest nor the least.

The pilgrim cried:
"What purpose
Burns within your endless fire?"
The sun replied with silence,
And the silence climbed still higher.

The silver mask lay broken.
Its fragments formed a lens.
Through it, every contradiction
Became a world again.

The pilgrim saw that knowledge
Could illuminate the night,
But every lamp casts darkness
At the borders of its light.

The crimson mask grew heavy.
The shouting turned to cries.
The pilgrim saw the faces
Behind the enemy disguise.

He carried every banner
To the river one by one.
The water kept the colours.
The wind returned the sun.

The golden mask was waiting
Where his journey had begun.
The crowd demanded triumph.
The trumpets praised the one.

The pilgrim placed the mask down.
He stepped beyond the gate.
The crowd continued cheering,
But could not tell for whom they waited.

When the last tower sleeps
And its windows lose the sky,
Who will count the footsteps
Of the centuries passing by?

When the final stone releases
Every oath carved in its face,
Will the earth recall the builders,
Or simply close the space?

The tower dreams in iron.
The tower dreams in rain.
It dreams that men are climbing
To command the world again.

Raise the wall.
Set the stone.
Make the summit ours alone.
Name the stars.
Chain the sea.
Build a throne above eternity.

Higher.
Higher.
Higher still.
Until the sky obeys the will.

Stone upon stone.
Name upon name.
Every tower ends the same.

An old man guarded the staircase
Long after the kings had gone.
He swept the dust from empty rooms
And opened them at dawn.

He kept no book of rulers.
He polished no display.
He fed the birds upon the roof
And watched the clouds decay.

"The tower was never mighty.
The height was never wise.
It only gave the lonely earth
Another place to see the skies."

The choir of empty chambers
Returned his words in gold.
For truth becomes much lighter
When nothing must be sold.

Then thunder crossed the valley.
The deepest pillars broke.
The tower leaned toward morning
Through a crown of dust and smoke.

The statues lost their faces.
The royal chambers fell.
The wind escaped the attic.
The stones released the bell.

But when the earth grew silent
And the final echoes ceased,
No darkness ruled the valley.
No buried fire was released.

Between the fallen columns,
A field appeared in bloom.
The birds descended slowly
Into the shattered room.

No tower lasts forever.
No summit owns the air.
No name commands the future
Simply by remaining there.

When the last tower sleeps,
Let no trumpet sound its fall.
The earth has carried everything.
The earth will carry all.

The old man crossed the meadow.
The evening turned to gold.
Behind him slept the tower.
Before him
Rose the world.