The Counter-World

There is another world that lies above
The world that we believe to be our own
The other world was mapped by thoughts and words
And truths that are not bound by what is known
The map was charted many years ago
By men with beards and fingers stained with ink
And thoughtful souls are adding to it still
With new machines that whirr and click and blink
As our world burns the counter-world expands
With trickster trails that turn and twist and bend
And roads that run to undiscovered lands
With facts that multiply and never end

There is a mausoleum where I live
With walls built out of books instead of stones
By masons who have worked five thousand years
For purposes of provenance unknown
The books are full of words I do not know
And thoughts that I can barely understand
On pages that are pied with yellow mould
With spores that linger dusty on my hands
But words are spores that germinate ideas
And some have passed the filters of my mind
And bedded in some dark and fertile place
And sprouted into manacles and binds

Simon Smith is an engineer from the South of England. He has been published online in Bewildering Stories and Chrome Baby

Find more by Simon Smith in the Author Index.

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