Written on the Rim

This is what I learned when I was Lull:
the infinite heavens are made up of
turning wheels. Every man's name is inscribed
around the rim of one. Yours. Mine,
turning, intersect. We meet. There are consequences
or not. We keep turning until death.

This is what I learned: to use
the Alphabet of the Magi to write another name
on another wheel. To win extra turns as another man,
as Paracelsus of Hohenheim.

Listen to the song of the axles. It is art, not science.
My characters, the letters that would redefine me,
I sent forth into the void, only guessing
where they might land. I made them.
I am what they made me; I forget what I was.

--Note: this completes the suite of poems based on the story "Calliope" from Neil Gaiman's Sandman.
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