Somebody left a village at nineteen swearing to come back rich,
and came back at forty with precisely the sum they had named,
and stood at the top of the lane holding it in a bag,
and found the house smaller than the number.

They had spent twenty-one years believing the sum was the thing.
It was the lane. It was always going to be the lane.
They put the bag down and walked it again slowly, the other way, for the first time.

The Book of the Phoenix — Wall 61:8