Beneath the Tree of Heaven

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House of Ch’in built the Wall to keep them apart, House of Han has to keep the beacons alight, Beacons alight and they never go out For these expeditions have never an end:

In the line, hand to hand, they’ll die the same, The horses will fall, call to Heaven their pain, The crows and the kites pick their riders’ guts And fly to dead trees with the bits in their beaks.. . .

Li Po, We Fought South of the Walls, EIGHTH CENTURY A.D.

Life is cheap, flesh plentiful.

COMMON SAYING, 2210 A.D.

PROLOGUE WINTER 2210

Ghosts’ Torches

Ah, silence, such silence, like in a dream, moonlight noble and heartless, in the same dusk, in the same dawn. No elegy to be heard, and no bells tolled. The gate to the world of the departed souk, is solemnly closed, seeing me into the funeral train which marries me to life, demanding I reclaim talent of days gone by. Ah, silence, such perpetual silence, there is no reply, and there is no echo, there are just ghosts’ torches, illuminating my whole life. . . .

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