An Urn In Time - For Dr Clarke, Egyptologist

He was our best, an urn in time With all the fragments of jewelled history But now today hear how the bells chime The griot's pen scroll another pain on memory. For all his knowledge of the scrolls, the dark charon came and rowed him away. Surprise translates not in this expectation urning lark song and sage alike. The griot, `til his yes were dark as the underworld of pyramid and tomb, had sung this strange thing that substanced splendour and dread with a long shadow from the womb. What is death? What is it to dread? He who dead kingdoms studied should have known. He should have seen the ages past and Egypt's glory gone. Dread never did enter that granite mind amidst the crumbling of black Atlantic pillars that bore the globe's splendour; It eroded mortal heart and urned past. Some tolled sweat to sing what time had done outside his fortress window. O, he knew by heart how time imperial creeps and set itself against all a man's desires, urning them. Death is the coming of the night, the silence of the voice, the fall of rage like leaf from a temple of a regret. For all his griot days of song, he was sad to rejoice now the past is dead, and no presence urns the void