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DEDICATION: There is no listening to the western winds. There are no secrets in the greenery. These statues see not the passing of time. The birds sing to them but they hear no song, With brushes witless, if not dumb to tell. I have journeyed to this garden again To look into the dark reliquary, And to see the leaves trapped in the fountains Dissolving blood-like into marble lines. With fallen faces of angels cast out, The viewer passes not their troubled eyes, Their breath of fire hushed over centuries. Should they speak, their braised tongues lock in stone jaws. They stand poised with their mouths pursed and waiting For that slight reprieve that they might achieve, Once more, the air of the mist of morning. * * * Having spent the better half of my life towards this work, one might suppose that its reason for being would be self-evident, as in the form which has evolved. This, however, remains to become so. I have had many demons to struggle, as it were, questioning my endurance and the sheer feasibility of this undertaking. One could premise a book solely on the virtues of this attempt. I shall not be the one to do it. I still have many things I would like to add or take away from the current text. There is a lesson to be learned in letting go. In the end, it may be that the poem simply is. -Matthew Hong / from Preface, I, Faust