“The Last Leaf”

The last section of the Book of Leaves: the Wanderer's Final Testament

The console on my pod fades; the battery dies.
Someplace the wire fire is still burning, and music breathes in everything.
Sounds and picture shows and screen bright to break the dark.
Dreaming of this place, I have always been
A memory of the future, chasing tomorrows:
The inescapable now holds me still
Alone in the night, as the world sleeps.
I will follow the fallen sun and dream again. Dream once more.
And in the morning promise me great times will come again,
And the homelands in our hearts will never fade away.
Let the legends promise me the earth shall rise again,
And homelands in the hearts of men shall never fade away.

— The Book of Leaves, The Wanderer

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This passage is the final verse written in the "Last Leaf" of The Book of Leaves, the section in which The Wanderer recollects the lyrics to the songs taught to him by his mother and recounts the events of his life. These songs are his last link to the fast-fading world of the Precursors. He listens to the songs and reflects on the lyrics with anecdotes of his own life and of the life of his mother back in the Oldside. The text draws to a conclusion. The Wanderer watches the light on his "Pod-Player" fade out as the battery dies and he sings these final lines to himself before slipping unconscious, presumably succumbing to the Blood Poison that has been slowly killing him throughout the frame narrative of the book.