He keeps the keys. The doors keep him.
That which is handed down is older than the hand. The kneeling figure is not made small by kneeling. The room has held many before; it will hold many after.
The rite is performed and nothing answers. The form remains; the spirit has departed. What was once living has become its own monument.
Names cut deep into stone. The hand that cut them is dust.
What you have built is already older than you know. The carving is finished. Whether it lasts is not your question to answer.
The name on the monument belongs to one who never lifted a stone. The stone does not lie. The historian will.
The child rides past the field. The horse does not stumble.
Two suns are in the sky and the day is wide enough for both. Nothing here has been hidden. Nothing here has been earned.
The light has not gone. The figure has turned away from it. The sky keeps its part of the bargain regardless.
The chains are warm where the wrist has rested against them.
The chain has the temperature of the skin it has rested against. It has been there long enough to be unnoticed. It is still a chain.
The link is open. Whether the wrist follows is a separate matter. Most chains outlast their use.
The cliff falls away. The sky does not.
The step has already been taken. The body has not yet caught up to it. What waits past the edge does not announce itself.
The horizon retreats as fast as you walk. There is nothing in the distance you did not bring with you.
The footprints arrive at his feet. Each one fits.
The path is older than the one who walks it. The stones remember the foot that fits them. The walking is the work.
The road continues without him. The road does not require him. The absence is recorded the way every absence is recorded.
The sword is sharp. The scale is level. Neither has spoken yet.
The scale knows what the tongue does not. The weight is placed and the truth is found on its own. The sword waits for the verdict.
The pan is loaded. The hand is hidden. The verdict will come, but the scale has already been taught what to say.
The ring stretches horizon to horizon. No side falls outside it.
The verdict is older than the trial. The scale was level long before the weight was placed. What will be true was true already.
A finger rests on the scale. The verdict was decided before the hearing. Every name on the bench knows it.
A thousand eyes fixed on the sky. None of them blink.
What is seen is preserved. What is preserved becomes the foundation of what is seen later. The line is unbroken until it is broken.
The records have burned before. They are burning now. What will be remembered is what someone chooses to remember.
She has not slept in three days. The pulse is steady because of it.
The pulse continues past the point where it should have stopped. The reason is at the bedside. The reason has not slept in days.
The pulse is sustained by hands that should have let go. The body is no longer in the breath. The vigil has become the only thing remaining.
The bleeding moon rises. Below it, two doors stand open.
What is ending was always going to end. The cycle does not require permission. What follows has waited long enough.
The body has ended. The hand on it has not. The refusal costs more than the ending it was meant to prevent.
The soil is dark. The hand that turns it is darker.
The roots go deeper than the frost. What was buried is still down there. What was planted is taking its time.
The soil has given what it can. The next crop will pull from somewhere else. The hand that planted does not know yet.
It turns. Hands have rested on it; none have moved it.
The wheel is at the angle now where the next thing arrives. What looked like luck was always the long arc of an earlier turn.
The grip is yours. The turn is the wheel's. One of these will give first.
One arm at the sky. One arm at the ground. The line between is charged.
The current is already running. The vessel exists. The shape of what arrives is set the moment the circuit closes.
The pose is correct. The current is absent. A remembered gesture has weight only as long as someone watches.
Her hand on the great mane. The teeth are still close.
The lion does not require taming. The hand has only to remain. The strength was here before the test arrived.
The hand has begun to shake. The lion has noticed. Strength remembered too late carries the same weight as strength absent.
She pours and pours. The water knows where to go.
She kneels at the water. The jar empties. The water continues. There is no end to what is poured here.
The water has stopped where she cannot see it stopping. The jar is held in the same posture. The river beneath has gone dry.
Roots below. Branches above. A figure where they cross.
What chooses one branch chooses every leaf on it. The wood remembers the cut for a thousand years.
The branches do not agree. They have not for some time. The trunk is the last thing to know.
The path across the water looks solid by moonlight. The wolves are not fooled.
The shapes on the path were always stones. The moon hides this. By morning the stones remain stones, and someone has walked into the water.
The mask falls in the firelight. The face beneath is smaller than the mask. The fear had been wearing the wrong shape.
The throne is iron. The iron came from the earth. The earth does not forget.
The chain holds the wall up. The wall holds the roof up. The roof keeps the rain off the work that matters.
The chain has begun to shape the wrist. The wall has begun to shape the room. What was meant to support has become the only thing remaining.
A small flame, carried at arm's length, by one who does not need it.
He stands apart from the company. The lamp he carries was lit there. Those still on the path will see it before they see him.
The lamp is shielded against weather that has already passed. The hand that holds it has forgotten the path it was meant for.
The trumpet sounds. The dirt above the graves stirs.
The trumpet calls all. The rising is mandatory. The choice was made when the sound began, and the sound began long ago.
The trumpet has sounded twice. The grave remains closed by the will of the one inside it. The sound does not stop for that.
The lightning came for the foundation. The tower was incidental.
The tower was false before the lightning knew it. The ground it stood on remains. What stood on the ground was never the ground.
The walls are buttressed against the inevitable. Each timber added is one more thing to fall when the rest does. The collapse is patient.
Water between two jars. Neither holds it for long.
The water passes between the jars. Each pour is the same weight. The one who pours has been doing so for longer than the work has taken.
The pour overshoots the rim. The water finds the floor. What was meant to be measured is now distributed by accident.
He hangs by one foot. His eyes are open. His hands are loose at his sides.
The world has been turned. The blood arrives at the head differently. What was familiar from above is unrecognizable from below.
The hanging has continued past the lesson. The figure has begun to call the rope a virtue. The ground waits where it has always waited.