The earliest interpretation of this cryptic saying, that it is a fragment from a longer allegorical work — a pageant or historical enactment, perhaps set to music — is almost certainly wrong. No context for such a performance can be derived from any Writing in the Archives, not to mention the torsion required to credit the absurd claim put forth by this construal: that "the ghosts" were some kind of lesser deities — even mortals raised to godly rank after death! — who served as messengers between the divine Ancients and the human world.

Apparently this explanation arose before any Writings of the Last One were discovered. The entities he calls "the ghosts" easily resist such lazy analysis; in his philosophy of life, they stand in the first rank of importance. His manifold and extended vituperations against the ghosts portray a formidable race of enchanters whom he blames entirely for the cataclysm that destroyed his world, the magnificent civilization of the Ancients.

There does (or did) exist what may have been an early "draft" of this saying, never officially incorporated into any previous structuring of the Archives, but ever lurking, as it were, among the miscellanea of unplaceable artifacts when they were transmitted. Here is a reconstruction:

The yelp of impatience trumpets
the Advent of the ghosts.

[By all reports, strikethrough in original. — Ed.]

The variants, though similar in sense, bear different freight, to wit:

• in the "draft", the yelp of impatience merely *announces* that the ghosts are near, or on their way, thus describing a symptom beyond the observer's control; whereas
• in the "received" version here reproduced, the act of becoming impatient itself has agency (it blows a trumpet), which *summons* the ghosts into the scene, whereupon, presumably, they bring to bear their ruinous influence on whatever ensues.

In either case, one must wonder *why* it should be that *impatience* serves to reveal or, worse, muster the ghosts?

Let us pause for a moment to ponder the operant word serving as the title of this antique Writing: it will more than repay any interruption in the flow of thought thus far.

What is impatience, after all? The loss (or relinquishment) of equanimity, in reaction to an unexpected development in the unfolding of time: one had expected (or wished that) one thing was to happen, but then something else — ie, other than what one wished or expected — happened instead.

The real question perhaps might be, How had this expectation or wish come about? or, to hint at an answer by rephrasing the question, What was the origin of the faulty expectation or wish in the first place?

We cannot help imagining the Last One's mordant retort: The ghosts, fool. What did you think?