Vulcan's black lizard of Jabuka Island, volcanic Avalon, shapeshifts into a malignant reptile's mobile body, a long-legged bird, membrane of a butterfly and snail. Carved in a dark hour from crooked craters overgrown with greyed grass. As the worm bores into the apple.
Perhaps it alone, eroded from a long seed, knows the answer. The river is wide, formed by bewilderment, a symbol of history suspended. How do you continue a story you do not know? There are no woods here to make new land by rooting down, that is sure. The scars are mirrors, black masses of stone and fire, fingers of flame and tireless legs voyaging.
Deep into the rock we enter, into great eyes, full of memory yet more of images. Around us and within us there multiply mute groups of creeping things, lizards, sable reptiles. They seem so close that we might touch them. Like everlasting sand sifted along the boats, withdrawn into shells, chased into fishing nets.
I think: I know them well, they wander along the same path. And yet I don't know how true the memories are, and what it is that I remember.

Translation: 2007, Kim Burton