Firelight

Sitting 'round the warmth of firelight
We had nothing to see but faces
illuminated orange, firefly.
I divined a message from the flames
Whose tongues leapt in foreign ecstasy:

"Fertile blessings
from the towers of Babylon--
The furniture's been moved out
the space is vacant."

From out of the darkness a man approached
a Shaman of distant lands.
In his hand a grand walking stick
And in his eyes the wisdom of Ages.

"It was all empty to begin with,"
the man with the long beard said to me.
Later that night I realized he was right
When suddenly I could see
The stars in the sky were reflections of mine own eye

And on this flaming orb of stardust we sit:
Reflections in the eyes of distant Others.
An endless hall of mirrors,
The Universe unfolds itself
as a spider caught in his web.