0 – Rinne

An echo, an echo! A terrible echo!

A resounding thrum through the spheres!

So a curse it is to be so long lived!

The great mouth of the Ogre opens as a gate!

Crush and Crunch in it so!

And I ask…

Who molded the winds?

When all was one,

when became it motion?

All swept in its great Wheel.

[_____] rises in boil.

Birth all, was given shape.

As from Its mud…

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

It was birthed as well.

The Lotus burns!

The [_____] felled.

The [_____] to [____] are barred

in its dancing steps!

—Unattributed fragment. Anonymous Author.

*

Uncovered in Balbhāk Archeological site. This anonymous fragment of a Jhrabipta, or “death poem” —a strange, esoteric eulogy for the self— was most likely written by one of the revered temple masters of the Lasham ziggurat close to his passing. Dated around the 8th century BTE.

Jhrabipta were seldom written and so even more rarely preserved. The ritual passing of revered masters, or Dōzen, included the solitary pondering of the soon-to-be deceased and the composition and writing of the poem; then promptly burned after entombment.

This particular fragment somehow evaded its ritual destruction. It is even more surprising how it went on to survive, protected from the elements by the collapsing of the ziggurat, crushed by layers of sand, for nearly eleven centuries. Now uncovered by the latest excavation of the Royal East-Mariannic archeological company.

Sadly, it is all but a fragment, and the mystical, poetic ideograms used in the manuscript, coupled with the eccentric nature of the Temple Bogpän language, used only by those initiated into clerical life, provides a challenge for contemporary philologists and linguists to decipher. Thus, the reader will note several blank terms occupying the space of ideograms yet to be translated; terms which may also have no parallel in modern continental tongues.

However tragic it may be, this haunting piece of history does consign to us, the still-living, a beautiful message of defiance in the face of time and death.

Excerpt - Roderin De Lamartine for Williamsburg Press Archeologist.