Downstream

We followed each other down to the river's bank
there was a desert, and all the people were silently grim,
some whispering as we wandered, sadly, slowly,
and the hot windless air oppressed our bones
as we walked single file down to the boats,
through the silent shushing of the reeds,
where we floated along for a very long time,
down an endless and mesmerizing river . . .
the air was searingly dry
and the river was putrid and we could not
sooth our dry throats
while our thirst for violence
disappeared like the shadows in the noonday sun,
nor could we staunch
our misery, our fear and our hunger for life
but we could see it all
floating away
on the tides of this deadly river. . .
this death of a river
lovingly washing over our aching bones
and we drift . . .
and we float . . .

The Desert Calls My Name sounds more solitary than collective, and is as I could imagine such a geographical feature beckoning one. As for awakening an entire, great nation, it must be serious, but then how big is a nation and I would imagine such virulence knows no boundaries as such. And, as I listen I can't help but think of Palestine and Israel and the modern day disease of war. However, in its more ancient setting, hysteria was more likely perhaps.

Passage of Kings has a suitable solemnity to its sense of movement/escape/abandonment. The suggestion seems to be that the King becomes a scapegoat in being attributed with the blame of causing the disease, hence the 'thirst for vengeance'. Downstream is more open and engenders a sense of realisation that a boundary is manufactured politically and although geographical features (rivers, mountain ranges) do contribute to such delineation, the case is not the same biologically.

Floating Bodies and Rotten Shorelines sort of proves the point, that no where appears to be safe from this apparently ubiquitous disease. Where is the point of escape, especially as the King's ship is more than likely going to further the spread of illness to anywhere it might disembark.

Fever Dreaming is more active in its expression, feverish indeed. Dream or nightmare? Sounds quite menacing, as if even the royal entourage has been captured by the bug rather than the crowd that pursues it. A realisation of the end, at the end.

Which leads us to the Graveyard at the Delta, an untimely end seeping its poison into the very ocean that lies beyond the final resting place. Leaving all At Serenity's Edge, where they lie down to die and fly freely into the aether, heaven bound. The ultimate, and perhaps only sense of escape from the epidemic.