Looking back, they read Innocence
and Peace above the gates
that closed on them
but no one knew whether
the exit had an inscription too

I wonder if it could
have been Distress
and Loneliness, no
those were empty words
to them at the time

The desire to know
more, to discover
what existed beyond
the walls, was the unrest
that drove them too

and that swelled into a storm
of progress, a dance
of the Great Time
that destructive power
of acquiring knowledge