With the loneliness of you mighty men, with your mighty kiss that might never, never end, while, so far away, in the seat of the West, burns the foun… - Joanna Newsom

Recall the word you gave:
to count your way across the depths of this arid world,
where you would yoke the waves,
and lay a bed of shining pearls! I dream it every night:
the ringing of the pail,
the motes of sand dislodged,
the shucking, quick and bright;
the twinned and cast-off shells reveal a single heart of white.

Above them,
parades mark the passing of days
through parks where pale colonnades arch
in marble and steel,
where all of the Twenty Thousand attending your foot fall
(and the Cause that they died for)
are lost in the idling birdcalls,
and the records they left are cryptic at best,
lost in obsolescence

And in an infinite regress:
Tell me, why is the pain of birth
lighter borne than the pain of death?