The Silkworm in the Staff

Lyrics

The year is five-hundred and sixty-five.
Justinian, in Constantinople, is tired of paying gold for thread.
Tired of the Persians and their tolls.
All the silk in the world comes from one place.
And that place has walls made of secrets.
Then come two monks, Nestorians.
Men who have walked the long road to Serinda.
Who have seen the worms, the leaves, the cocoons.
They whisper to the Emperor, not of prayer, but of process.
They say, we can bring the mountain to you.
We need only our walking staves.
Hollow bamboo. Lightweight. Unassuming.
A good stick for a long road.
A secret small enough to hide in a shadow.
A fortune that fits in a hollow cane.
The eggs of Bombyx mori, no bigger than dust.
The breaking of a world in a pilgrim's staff.
This is the story of the currency that crawled.
The treasure that woke up and chewed on a leaf.
They walked back East.
Procopius doesn't say their names. History rarely does.
Across the high passes, through the biting wind.
They carried their staves like any other traveler.
Leaning on them. Tapping the dusty road.
While inside, a thousand dormant lives waited for a Byzantine spring.
Waited for the taste of a mulberry leaf they'd never known.
A whole economy, sleeping in the dark.
A secret small enough to hide in a shadow.
A fortune that fits in a hollow cane.
The eggs of Bombyx mori, no bigger than dust.
The breaking of a world in a pilgrim's staff.
This is the story of the currency that crawled.
The treasure that woke up and chewed on a leaf.
Back in the palace, they split the bamboo.
Poured the poppy seeds of a new age onto a silk cloth.
Justinian saw not eggs, but looms.
Not insects, but legions clothed in purple.
The monks explained the second half of the theft:
The worms must eat. Only mulberry.
So they planted groves.
The palace gardens filled with the specific green.
And the domesticated moths, unable to fly, did their work.
China's secret was broken.
Persia's toll gates rusted.
The Romans made their own robes from then on.
All because two men, whose names we've lost,
took a long walk.
And carried an empire in a hollow stick.