Stub towers in the distance

Riders cross the blasted moor

Against the horizon

Fickle promises of treaty

Fatal harbingers of war, futile orisons

Swirl as one in this flight, this mad chase

This surge across the marshy mud landscape

Until the meaning is forgotten

Hood masks the eager face, skin stretched and sallow

Headlong into the chilling night, as swift as any Arrow

Feet against the flagstones

Fingers scrabbling at the lock

Craving protection

"Sanctuary!", croaks a voice

Half-strangled by the shock of its rejection

Shot the bolt in the wall, rusted the key;

Now the echoes of all frightful memory

Intrude in the silence

What a crawl against the slope - dark loom the gallows

One touch to the chapel door, how swiftly comes the Arrow

"Compassion", you plead

As though they kept it in a box, hah! -

Well, that's long since been empty

I'd like to help you somehow

But I'm in the self-same spot:

Oh, my condition exempts me

We are all on the run, on our knees;

The sundial draws a line upon eternity

Across every number

How long the time seems, how dark the shadow

Oh, how straight the eagle flies, how straight towards his Arrow

How long the night is - why is this passage so narrow?

How strange my body feels, impaled upon the Arrow