The labyrinth is burning.
Something or someone set it ablaze.
We who live on its edge watch
with horror and delight.
We always wanted to know
what was hidden within and now we might.
The secret in the darkness
at the labyrinth’s center, if it even has one.
The secret known only to a few priests
and the king himself.
A monster, or monsters, treasure,
secret learning too powerful to share.
The labyrinth is burning. Underground
chambers collapse and crack the streets.
The secret of kings will be revealed
by fire as the palace falls
and the walls fall and the roofs fall
and the sea rages in
and the sun disappears,
we will be granted knowledge
locked away by our ancestors who taught us
to turn away from the wrath of god.
What has filled the labyrinth?
What could power not dare reveal?
Nothing at all.
Nothing.
And as the city turns to sand
and fans of water in the mud,
and some of us play the monsters,
robbing treasure they couldn’t loot,
with that knowledge of the world
as it really is will come freedom,
Luó, freedom through destruction,
freedom from all constraint,
no halls for lack of walls,
no paths for lack of forests.
In that expanse we will be forced
to decide whether to become kinder,
to grow a lattice from entwined fingers,
to build a wall or build four,
whether to rebuild the maze,
what to write down, what to hide.