My Harmonies Plead For Mercy

Did I arrive before the final showing? Before your heart was erased? All I know is that When we run the gamut There are rules That cannot be broken And shattered like an icicle Falling to the ground. There are spirals in the mind That annoy even the great ones, With pedigrees like tulips. Free at last-- Or so he thought-- Before the final undertaking. All hope of winning the prize is lost, Yet beauty stands out And is known. In this prison of mortality, I am a limp doll. My features show the age of years; My harmonies plead for mercy. Do you remember a name, I asked. There was no answer. But I knew it was Stephen-- Stephen who paints windows And affixes doors-- Stephen the unhinged. Fiction, he said, is the truth Behind the facts, The wandering of lost sheep Who walk in their dreams. They are those who in a trance Can appear quite normal. Like frogs, they burrow beneath the mud And wait for rain. Rain was a long time coming that year. Everyone knew it would be dry; The almanac said so. The signs were posted everywhere: Seven years of drought, A long waiting to be born.