Dirge

still tired, I awoke,
while the blue dust of dusk still covered earth,
I did not wait ‘til the Dawn broke,
from my home I traveled forth
lit by my soul’s own burning
without the aid of morning,
to the place of mourning
where friend and family lay man into dirt.

there where the world is silent,
where engraved stone and eld tree are hid by lichen,
dead moss rules a land once vibrant,
which has grown sick and rotten
with the miasma of winds grey
wailing for those who’ve passed away
yet there is another decay;
the name of friend and family forgotten.

sullen air enters my lungs,
lightning flashes, a memory doesn’t belong,
my own words feel like foreign tongues,
each word and excuse seems wrong,
there is a time to weep, I know,
why then, will it hurt to let it show?
and how can a man let go
a grief too sad for song?

Absent, soundless, the hordes of ghosts
wrapt about my head with a funerary shroud,
through the black pall I saw the hosts
and their still hurting voices which aloud
moaned for countless things periphery,
moaned for pointless injury,
moaned for purposeless misery,
these are the words of their mouths.

“I am gone, the image of one nowhere”
no laughs, no cries, no tears fell from their eyes,
and in their lack my tears fell with despair
as my own breath allowed them sighs.
“their life has withdrawn yet I persist
though foregone, they live as an imprint
while mingled with the pre-Dawn abyss”
as I said these things, each ghost ascended the skies

a blink, they like a daydream dissolve,
they were without substance nor presence,
resolve dies, yet the world still revolves
leaving an absence, and an absence of absence
this is the presence of the dead, a hole
which shall never become whole
without a man’s immortal soul,
leaving in the world an absence.

“my heart grows lichened and leprous, infected
with a plague of deep disdain
for a world which leaves the dead neglected,
ignoring them as a dark stain,
as some valueless dross,
I shall not forget their loss
even if it hides my heart in moss”
then I returned home in pain.

though i walked a street clad in dawn
and returned to my place of rest,
something in me felt far and gone,
mourning has impressed upon my soul his grey crest,
it does not burn like a fire,
nor the rebuke of heaven’s choir,
not even the hunger of desire,
it is a weight upon my chest.

Lord who gave us living water and breath
save us from the horror of death.