Bebiotai

Through a broken temple of roofless hills
The rain is barbarians riding
Their grey galloping clouds
On a wind that howls for the lives of
Those who have been.

And gloom in the log-strewn valley covers
The broken lives of men
Whom time's ravening river
Has brought to fall from the steep
Hills of life.

To a doom and forgottenness
Under the screening of storm
And river-poured debris,
Vanished, passed like a moment of sun
That might never have been.

D. A. Patterson.