From Ancient Times

The lakes of our country are turbulent. They swirl around and around their basins, wearing down the confining banks, turning the landscape into a wide pool. Trees, shrubs, topsoil, flowers, all are sacrificed, and water claims a barren landscape for itself. The mountains of our country are little more than hills. We call the region the High Country because we are a proud people. But the winds of the four directions unleashed their tremendous breathings against rock and buried gems. turned hardness into dust, scattered it into vast deserts. The birds of our country are all of one species, vultures with famished eyes and claws sharpened against jagged rocks. Over the centuries the vultures consumed the songbirds in a frenzy of appetite. And silence descended over the land, broken only by the vultures' choked cries as they scrounge for threads of food. The people of our country do penance every morning and evening: they pray in cracked voices for the return of the Gods, who once imposed order on nature. WE are ready to surrender. Return to us, You Gods. WE beg to be mastered.