A Soul In Ev'ry Stone

[Skip Wolfe]

 BRIAN ANTONAK writes:

>. . . But there's just one last question I have: what do y'all think the
Final Song >means?  Here it is:
>
>"There is a hand to turn the time,
>Though thy glass today be run,
>Till the light that hath brought the Towers low
>Find the last poor Pret'rite one...
>Till the Riders sleep by ev'ry road,
>All through our crippl'd Zone,
>With a face on ev'ry mountainside,
>And a soul in ev'ry stone...
>
>Now everybody "

I always feel a colossal poignancy in that first line -- we've all just
been through 750 pages of uncertainty, chaos, and loss, with the
ever-present hint of anti-paranoia (nothing is connected to anything),
and now the rocket is finally poised above our heads -- the narrator
urges us to seek comfort -- and what comfort can we -- with hopeful
confidence -- claim?  Only that there is a "hand to turn the time," i.e.,
that there is some order or structure or meaning in all of this.  That
there's some hope (light?) for the preterite (us?)??  I always pictured
dark riders a la Lord of the Rings (or the Tristero) harmlessly asleep
and even the mountains and stones aligned into some comfortable and
familiar order.  "Are those dreams or are those prayers?" (Tom Waits).