A Sestina: Hashan

<< A sestina is a poetic form that involves a strict pattern of the
ending word of each line in each stanza. This is about Hashan, an
ancient city in ruins south of Tasur'ke.>>

One evening, standing amongst phase hounds:
Transient animals of changing reality.
The ruined columns cast ominous shadows
Across my face and over broken stone.
Silence pervades the ruined city
I am too alone to cry.

What breaks this stagnacy is a cry
From a pair of mourning hounds
Which echoes around the abandoned sity
And is the only sign of physical reality.
It reflects off of the streets of stone
And disappears into shadow.

Within the deep and unpierced shadows
Comes no light's feeble cry.
My features freeze into stone.
I look back at the moaning hounds.
Am I more tangible than their reality?
It's hard to know, in this desolate city.

Along the main road of the city,
Between the columns' shadows,
A torn statue's reality
Leaves no granite tear to cry.
Fallen around mangy hounds
A broken visage grimaces in stone.

Shattered and useless stone!
I grow hysterical within the city.
I cannot bear the apathetic hounds
Who lounge, never straying from shadows.
I long to release the absurd cry;
We are compromising our reality.

Oh! But to understand reality
Is to jettison the facade of stone
In a primal and earnest cry
To revitalize the ruined city.
Bring forth your war-torn face from the shadows!
Throw your past to the hungry hounds!

I walk back through the stony city.
I walk within the familiar shadows.
I make my home among the hounds.

Penned by my hand on the 16th of Haernos, in the year 113 MA.