Vox Meditantis

Beneath the spires of Altenburg, the horses stamp and neigh,
as soldiers polish heavy steel to face the coming fray;
my brothers shout of boundary lines and map the Rhine in red,
but I am drawn to ancient stone and silver maps instead.
Upon the north-facing watchtower, where the shadows pool and cling,
I watch a quiet empire rise: a slow and velvet thing.
Ignoring drums of human war and crowns of fleeting gold,
I find a perfect geometry within the lichen’s fold.

My velvet breeches, heavy-stitched, are darkened at the knee,
from kneeling where the granite meets the damp of every tree.
Through Dutch-ground glass I peer at walls to find a secret state,
where silver rosettes bloom in dust and mock the palace gate.
I trace the neon-fringed frontiers that colonise the stone,
the tiny, sprawling city-scapes I claim as all my own.
With steady hand and quiet heart, I map each spore and vein,
while greater kings across the hills prepare for blood and rain.

My father passes, spurs a-clink, his sabre at his thigh;
he casts a shadow o’er the moss and heaves a heavy sigh.
“A Prince of Altenburg,” he sneers, “should study lead and flame,
not hunt for beauty in the rot that brings our house to shame.”
He sees the dirt upon my hands, the smudge upon my brow,
a royal gardener of the void, with nothing left to plough.
They do not see the emerald maps or understand the worth,
of holding dominion o’er the small and silent things of earth.

The lichen does not draw a sword or beat a hollow drum,
yet wait a hundred quiet years and see what has become.
It breathes into the granite wall and turns the stone to dust,
a conquest won with patience, not with fury or with lust.
Let Bonaparte bridge frozen Alps with cannons and with cries,
whilst here a slow and emerald truth unfolds before my eyes.
For while the empires rise and fall and men go mad for power,
the velvet crust devours the fort, one atom every hour.

The borders shifted long ago and titles turned to air;
the House of Altenburg is gone and no one seems to care.
The flags have rotted in the hall and bells no longer ring,
yet still the grey and green remain: a slow and patient king.
Upon the shards of broken stone where once my father stood,
the velvet conquest claims the ground as only nature could.
The maps of men are rewritten by the scratching of a pen,
but lichen rules the ruins now, beyond the reach of men.

Bob Lynn | © 2026 Vox Meditantis. All rights reserved.