What can be said of the children of this age?
they are are like a society of explorers and archaeologists
who became convinced of the dearth of truth in their own borders.
they collected maps and atlases, weathered and worn,
laid them on their walls as tapestries,
assembled in small, wide-eyed groups to decipher and connect
drew to their chests compasses and electronics,
knelt at their shrines of computers and books,
became convinced of a harvest of history and rubies,
emeralds and wisdom in a land not their own.
they sold their possessions, their homes, their birthrights,
wrote their wills, swept together savings bonds, retirement plans,
trust funds to finance a journey to this place, this fresh frontier.
they cross-examined and cross-referenced their charts, their legends
with stars and satellites over ocean and into mountains
far from their homes, arrived at the site foretold by their plans,
and immediately set about to unearthing it in a storm of shovels and machinery,
only to uncover a vast, intricate emptiness,
a pattern of resonant tunnels and blankly majestic caverns, a nothing, a failure.
They quickly left, abandoning their lattice of equipment and cordons,
and returned to their own country, taking refuge with what remained
of their friends and relatives.
Of their trip, they stuck to the lie they had told themselves on the journey back,
which told nothing of the echoing caves, that they couldn’t follow their maps,
that lost and running out of food, they had been forced to abandon their search.
They vowed loudly to return, quietly pawned their guides and maps,
nursed their humiliation with bravado, let a disquiet seep into their palms,
the caves themselves roaring and thundering in their eyes.
