Bill Martin

“And these things were never so precious
Listen to the bird in its cage as it speaks
In a dying man's voice; when he is gone
The voice lives to greet and give empty
Assurances with random poignancy

I do not know if I could live with that
If I could armor myself as the unhuman beak
Opens to a dead man's reminder, head cocked
As if channeling the ghost of the one
Who imagines an absence of sense, a vacuum awaiting

The cage is barred and nightly falls the shroud
To silene the commentary of impossible apostles
Spirit godlings and spanning abyss, impenetrable cloud
Between the living and the dead, the here and the gone
Where no bridge can smooth the passage of pain

And these things were never so precious
Listening to the bird as it speaks and it speaks
And it speaks, the one who has faded away
The father departed knowing the unknown
And it speaks and it speaks and it speaks
In my father's voice

Caged Bird
Fisher kel Tath”
― Steven Erikson, Toll the Hounds

“To stand in the heart of Dragnipur, to stand above the very Gate of Darkness, this was, for Anomander Rake, a most final act. Perhaps it was desperation. Or a sacrifice beyond all mortal measure.”
― Steven Erikson, Toll the Hounds

“Leave him there, now, and ride one last ripple, out beyond the city, west along the lakeshore, out to a dusty, smoky pit where the less privileged labored through their shortened lives to keep such creatures as Gorlas Vidikas and Humble Measure at the level of comfort and entitlement they held to be righteous. And, to be fair, they labored as well to contribute to the general feeling of civilization, which is normally measured by technical wherewithal, a sense of progression, and the the notion of structural stability, little of which said laborers could themselves experience, save vicariously.”
― Steven Erikson, Toll the Hounds

“We're all born to die, you idiot. Let the span last a single heartbeat, let it last a thousand years. Stretch the heartbeat out, crush down the centuries, it's no different. They feel the same, when the end arrives.
Gods, they feel the same!”
― Steven Erikson, Toll the Hounds