From Distant Hills Poem by Rory Hudson

Seven weary lions have tramped across the East African plain;
the sun is setting behind the dunes in Carolina;
in Bangkok the temple girls are rolling up the bamboo mats;
while here
I watch the flight of galahs to distant roosts.

And even now,
after the farewells have been said and all the guests have gone,
and those who know have made an end of it in their own homes,
a song comes winging from distant hills,
even from the lands where the lights are already extinguished,
gentle as the wind piping it comes winding through the wide valleys,
clear as the moonlight it washes onto the shores of darkness.

And my love is a string on a lute which I alone can play,
can send forth my song answering into the night,
my melody brooding darkly among bare hills,
echoing from strings of steel the world’s sweet call;
sweet, aye, and sad too, sinking among the shadows,
the shadows, the nocturnal shadows that know no limits.

Ah, where are the heroes now, that were wont
to do great deeds, to set their deeds in song,
carousing with the best, drinking to the death -
the damned uproar that drowned the sound of night,
the epics burned into the sands of time?

Not so this time, there is no further round,
only the song from the hills waits now for an answer,
for the watchmen of the night are extinguishing their lanterns,
and here, nose pressed against the window,
I see the silent falling of the stars.