He walked out into the road and stood. The silence. The salitter drying from the earth. The mudstained shapes of flooded cities burned to th waterline. At a crossroads a ground set with dolmen stones where the spoken bones of oracles lay moldering. No sound but the wind. What will you say? A living man spoke these lines? He sharpened a quill with his small pen knife to scribe these things in sloe or lampblack? At some reckonable and entabled moment? He is coming to steal my eyes. To seal my mouth with dirt.
The text portrays a haunting scene where the protagonist stands in silence amidst the aftermath of destruction, surrounded by remnants of a flooded city. The imagery evokes a sense of desolation, with the earth drying in the wake of the flood and ancient stones hinting at forgotten oracles. The atmosphere is thick with stillness, broken only by the wind, emphasizing the eerie solitude of the landscape.
The protagonist seems to grapple with a profound existential crisis, questioning the very nature of speech and existence. The act of sharpening a quill suggests a desire to record these thoughts or truths, yet there is a looming dread, as he anticipates a malevolent force that seeks to take away his sight and voice. This evokes themes of loss, memory, and the struggle for identity in a world ravaged by chaos.