We Who Ride This Melancholy Car

We who ride this melancholy car,

Through the blackness of uncountable suns,

Through the birdsong and the bee hum,

And all the bright business of mankind flitting,

At our lace-webbed windows,

Herein we are a dependency of frozen worlds ,

Circling a now extinguished star,

Fearing the newly loosened cord,

Fearing the motley universe,

And fearing most the little bag of dust,

Once he had commerce and civilization,

Agitation and war, Religion and belief,

And Love was known to wander half mad,

Half naked the lighted boulevards,

Wasn't there once a small Tsarina lost in those streets?

Her gold curls, her jeweled cap, her brocade dress,

Disappeared in the press of journeymen and sailors,

Down the long and narrow street to a place where terror meets pain,

Now, in their parlors, her cousin Princes speak In muted tones, for it is finished, done,

Except the telling of a worm-holed tale,

And I know not the bard of those lyrics,

For I hear the preacher shouting,

And the choir crying "Brook of Jordan."