I will begin with the beginning, which I suppose is as good a place as any. It is how they want me to begin when they are young and eager and keen to hear of those much like themselves. For my part it seems I have become so ancient that only the chapters and verses that speak of the highest triumphs and lowest moments of despair interest me any more.
"Sing the songs of the heroes," they urge me, "the songs of the sons and their honoured dead."
So when the time comes I am roused from my slumbers and sing once more the songs of the battles fought in past times as best I remember them. But ancestors help me; my memories are glacial things that shift and shear with no thought for my own recollection. Seen from my waking vantage they seem to change in shape and meaning each time I seek to recall the songs that were entrusted to me.
"Not so," they chide me, "not so was the song when last you sang it, ancient Phobos."
But still they come to kneel before me and listen to my song, what compels them is beyond the ken of a mortal man to understand. There is no word or turn of phrase to capture the need to connect oneself to those that have gone before, to whom we are linked by genetics and so much that goes beyond the physical.
So I sing the songs as I recall them when I wake, and with that they must be satisfied.
Now as I feel myself stirred towards waking, I hear in my mind the songs of broken Caracala, of Old Father Time and the Toll Bridge.
And who knows, perhaps this time I will recall them as they were.
And perhaps I will not.
But they will come and listen at my feet nevertheless.
