A rhythm I heard once chiselling a stone,
The chisel beats were of sound cadent notes,
A remote lyric of a human lay
Hitherto unheard in the quarried rock.
I listened and the lay past history
Was the true echo of the stone today
The stone I chiselled for the wall to stand
But one of those petrified long ago.
This what I have heard when a mason made
The notes gave me the rock to understand
That I shall go back into earth a rock
And be cut someday for the wall a stone.
The wall will wrinkle, crumble, shingles fall
But the rhythm of the beats will remain
Travelling soundless orbitting around
The dome of doom and the desert of time.