Miriam darvas biography

The author's father wrote a poem, quoted before the beginning of the story:-

"The Sunken City

"Like one lost in the fog in the evening,
groping to find that lost road
toward the City,
which yesterday, in the earthquake,
sank into the Bottomless Lake;
but people were expecting him there longingly,
desires, beliefs, goals, and battles,
wife, ecstasy, music, life;
but he doesn’t yet know
that all this has been lost beneath the surface;
he just keeps going, or would go, but false sound shadows
lead him astray from the path:
woes, slogans, echoes, songs,
foghorns sounding alarms,
a will-o’-the-wisp, a phantom, a fog mirage;
in the heavy, dense silence that aches in sympathy,
the dark wings of the shadows of fate rustle,
a witch’s gloating cackles,
the withering horror of the deaf darkness
gapes, like the throat of execution day,
from its ice caves of distant old age,
a wolf howls, a hyena laughs,
and the dog of death barks: —
"Oh, where have you gon