Misadventure in the Fifth World

EMERGENCE

O come, my young ones, gather

hear the mystic tales, and know them!

May my words be soap and lather

with which all the youth be cleanséd.

For to avoid the folly

of the fathers of your fathers—

so not your conscience colly

with old, futile division:

In this new world emergéd

a people, from the ashes

of the Fourth World, submergéd

'neath Babel's dark illusion;

my children, do not wonder

at faeries and strange creatures,

at spirits, giants, thunder—

for peace has come between us.

A Fifth world now has risen.

We are become its keepers,

lest vanity imprison

as it had done before us.

Let us not grow weary,

nor our voices shake and falter.

The world before was dreary,

yet beauty lies ahead.