I. Invocation

Silence calls for the prayers
Of longing and desire....
Searching the damaged sky
For spiritual attire,
Robes of such splendid layers!

Kingdoms rise and die,
The continents drift on
Stroking the sands of Time
Where dynasties have gone...
Eons pass us by.

Within our hearts we mourn the crime,
The treachery of our fears
Harboring the cruelty of humankind
While struggling through our tears
To celebrate worlds more sublime.

II. Destruction

Aeneas fought a losing cause.
Troy could not survive
The siege and the deceit...
Few would leave alive.
The ancient world would briefly pause

Before succumbing to defeat.
Troy was the virtue of the past
Weaving its web of doom,
A cloistered state that could not last...
(Cassandra warned the smug elite!)

Erupting from destruction's gloom...
Innocents slaughtered and land laid waste,
Carnage and devastation---
Tricked to believe the Greeks fled in haste
An ancient city was entombed.

III. Darkness

Depressed by the loss of life
Of family and friends,
Aeneas wandered the world
Seeking to make amends...
But fate fostered further strife.

Aeneas descended into the Underworld,
And summoned by his departed father,
Is shown what the world will be...
Somehow humanity would not bother
To reject terror and hatred unfurled

In wars that terrorize and intimidate the free
With weapons of such massive powers
That all are faced with extinction---
Then the attack on the twin towers...
Vaporizing innocence in falling debris.

IV. Lost

In the vortex of Time's distortion
Aeneas was lost...
Wars collapsed into raging storms...
Aeneas was tossed
In a limbo of vast proportion..

Thrust into swirling ocean swarms,
Broken and bitter and battered,
Aeneas surrendered to blackest night...
All he believed in was shattered,
Filled only with meaningless forms.

Drifting aimlessly beyond the world's sight,
Aeneas struggled in a tormented sleep.
Through the nightmares beckoned a distant land
Coaxing like ancient sirens of the deep.
At sea's end, he saw a flickering light.

V. Chosun

Aeneas, stranded on an alien shore,
Found people of such beauty there.
Chosun, a land of calm and so serene,
Where life was shaped with loving care,
Revealing wonders never known before.

Korea, remembering what the past should mean,
Celebrates with ceremonies profound...
Shimmering cloaks of antiquity caressed
The present with the ancient realms of sound
Touching the future with images never seen.

The people saw Aeneas was deeply distressed.
They led him to a simple thatched-roof room
That was to be his Choga.
There he could deal with the demons of his doom...
Aeneas faced the greatest challenge of his quest.

VI. Choga

Amidst the chaos of each endless day,
Aeneas dwelt within his simple hut,
A refuge with a roof of straw employed---
Clean and well-lit, the sanctuary shut
Out the clamor and the disarray.

Aeneas mourned for worlds destroyed,
The loss of loved ones and the shattered lives...
Yet in himself he sensed a vital source---
Somehow within, the spirit still survives
Emerging from the blackest void.

Aeneas wept, remembering such savage force
Betraying hopes and dreams of human hearts.
The journey of his Choga made him discover
A surging synthesis of different parts---
East and West and North and South charting but one course.

VII. Renaissance

Aeneas sang of silence, of eloquence and mystery...
Silence from the chaos giving birth
To order... Silence singing without rhyme
Where Time was teased to teach the earth
The fabric of its narrative, the meaning of its history.

Aeneas danced through corridors of Time
Where music faltering on fragile wings
Touched the ears as silken garments flow
And magic merging with the moment brings
A renaissance of higher heights to climb.

Aeneas dreamt of East and West, seeking somehow to show
How we define each other through our presence
In search of peace, in search of hope,
He discovers an underlying essence---
Be present with each other... that is all we need to know.