NOW NEW MEN WON. (delta)

There used to be wolves here. Not much else. No joyful and easily fruitful land, no hills to shield us from these wind that seem more like gelid knives, no rivers, no human-trod paths. A desert filled with creeping, half-dead plants with no sap, no veins, no imagination. What reasons made men put stones over stones and call them homes, in these sceneries under godless skies, I know not, but reasons they were. They remained here, forgetful of the rest of the world. They care not if we live in a wider Europe, or that there are new democracies, or that we’ve become a Republic, or that kings are dead now, or that the lands have been conquered by more recent nobles in the name of the Christ, or older nobles in the name of Mahomet, or even older ones in the name of Wotan and Thor, or by soldiers of an immense Empire, that put up markets with people from other distant lands and seas, for they were but passengers of the vast trails from the far-flung mountains. Forgetful for centuries. Almost pre-human. No need to carry weapons, nothing to protect, nothing to guard, nothing to crave. No weapons arisen here. As shadows, dissolved in deeper shadows or outlined in the sunlight, yet invisible at all times.