| The river had brought with it much that day | 
| From driftwood to blood from the ember | 
| Some things were hidden | 
| While others were seen | 
| Yet the man somehow could not remember… | 
| Having ambled away from the water’s banks | 
| To return to his tribe and their lights | 
| He soon found a failing | 
| Of flesh, and of mind — | 
| They were no longer robust or bright | 
| What he could not have seen | 
| Was the sickness upstream; | 
| Those abandoned remains of the wasted | 
| What he could not have seen | 
| Was the sickness upstream; | 
| Those abandoned remains of the wasted | 
| What he could not have known | 
| Was the blight of the bone | 
| In each ebb and each flow he had tasted | 
| Dawn found him ailing, delirium rife | 
| Those he loved feared his illness would wander | 
| With time wearing thin | 
| His young eyes clouded in | 
| As the odour of smoke became stronger | 
| It was then that he heard the sharp crackle of torches | 
| Carried past him by men from his clan | 
| A panic cut through | 
| All the life that he knew | 
| It was over before it began | 
| Rope looped his wrists and held tight to his veins | 
| As beside him his relatives sagged | 
| And with tears in their eyes | 
| Through confusion and cries | 
| Out towards the wild flames he was dragged | 
| Like billions before him, regardless of form | 
| It ended as chance had decided | 
| So briefly contained | 
| An inferno’s refrain | 
| Having powered and angered and guided | 
| At the heart of the blaze, awareness dissolved | 
| Light ascended devoid of desire | 
| From a trail intertwined | 
| Life and death strewn behind | 
| To the stars, it returned, from the fire |