Island of the Lost

We’re cold, we’re hungry, we’re lost.
But rising smoke dances beyond clifftops
From chimneys where they’re not lost.
Strangers washed ashore a strange island,
We fled her fetters to go somewhere, nowhere;
Surely anywhere’d be better than lost.

Their torches march among the pines, searching
For someone missing in the darkness;
They aren’t searching about for us, we know,
For they glare at us with such darkness.

Bricks lie scattered like fallen leaves, or
Like fallen fruit that we might feast on;
Fallen from, fluttering to, as if lost.
And among them sit blackened steel and bronze
Scraps into which we might work new spark
Someday, to replace the spirit it’s lost.

Their hollow whispers drift down the streets,
Lamenting the rubble and dust and ashes,
Still, still calling out through the pale night
For the little one with feathers like ashes.

Cold, hungry birds perch now on mountaintops,
For red brick towers soar new in the valley
In the cities that they have lost.
But we were cold and hungry once too; that
Was why we feasted on fallen fruit,
Such sweetness in which to be lost.

So savory, so tender as we tore into the flesh,
We ate and sang with much gusto and fire;
And they could but watch, wailing from afar
As we’d plucked gray feathers by the fire.

For what onlooker wouldn’t be envious,
Of such a splendid roast? Least of all them:
They’re cold, they’re hungry, they’re lost.