I. STYLOBATES MARMOREUS

      The pedestal was empty. To its side
stood she who just had occupied the stand –
a plinth of smoothest marble, white as wings
of birds, the flocks that wheeled overhead.
She was Marie of Datoíri, chief
ambassador for all that region known
as the Imaginary Planets –  faméd
clime. This league of five small planets had
seceded, as we know, from all the rest,
so that it might provide a haven and
asylum for all those in discontent
with customs of the ordinary world.
Its institutions and its people strove
to uphold standards of integrity
and to preserve, by way of their own lives
and thoughts, the qualities its founders had
felt to be missing in the world at large.
Lamented most was loss of decency,
nobility – a resolute commitment
to one’s own ideals, despite the world.
On the Imaginary Planets, then,
this concept of nobility was held
as paramount, above all else.
                                              Marie
of Datoíri, as we might expect,
in her role as the head ambassador
and spokesperson for this alliance – she
held this ideal of nobility
close to her soul, and perhaps more than any
other person, she embodied it
herself.
          She stood now, solitary, at
the crest of a green hill, across from which
one clearly could discern an edifice
of sandstone and white granite – lofty columns
reaching to the sky, capped by a dome.
Above the columns chiseled words proclaimed
the virtues:  pietas, arete – words
of every language, each of which extolled
some quality the Planets gave acclaim.

Marie, though, stood in silence, as she gazed
upon the building opposite her hill.
Her face was frozen – features seeming carved
from marble solid as her pedestal’s.
Nor did her feet move, and her hands hung limply
at her sides, though light wind stirred the grass
and strands of her dark hair. Her mind derived
no satisfaction from the carven words,
though this same sight had long consoled her heart
and served to ease her cares in troubled times.
Instead her eyes strayed to the marble plinth.
This pedestal, she thought, reminded her
of one much like it, by which she had once
stood, at a time so far removed by now
it had near vanished, quietly subsumed
beneath the shaded depths of memory.

And now, as she stood motionless, she heard
soft footsteps from behind – her comrade Edward
of Sciscitus had approached, that man
of gentle and perceptive temperament,
for years her closest friend and confidant.
His hand fell on her shoulder as he spoke:
“Marie? What troubles you? I came because
the ship is leaving soon that will transport
our delegation to the Inner Worlds
for the Septennial Conference. You know well
we are expected at this great event.”

Without a turn, nor any movement of
her lifeless stance, Marie replied: “I have
no wish to confer with these base
and ordinary minds. I’ve had enough
of that.” Her voice fell from her mouth
a monotone and dry.
                              Concerned, and now
with growing puzzlement as well, her friend
peered forward so that he could see her face:
“I’ve never heard you speak this way before.
We know the people of the Inner Worlds
are careless and misguided, it is true,
but no one can dismiss them as devoid
of any worth. And you, especially,
as an ambassador – I thought you held
some interest in them; that is why you chose
this job.”
            Her shoulders seemed to cave a trace,
collapsing inward as though with the wind,
and as response she shook her head. Now turning
from the pedestal and dome, aflame
with waning sunlight from behind, she started
down the hill.
                    Uncertain, Edward was
about to call to her, but now she paused
and looked over her shoulder as she spoke:
“Don’t trouble yourself. I should not have tried
to speak at all: my thoughts are not quite clear.
I’ll go to the Septennial, as planned.
Now let us leave this planet, marked by such
wide sky and prairie; I prefer the ship.”

The light shone on her pin, a silver orb
denoting rank, and Edward’s golden beard.
They made their way down to the port, where ships
lay silent in their piers, like dormant birds.