Here is an elongated deathly poetry, wrought in the old style, slow and unrelenting:
I am the lengthening shadow that swallows the sun at vespers,
the hush that gathers in the rafters when the last lamp gutters.
I walk the corridors of the marrow, barefoot, patient,
trailing a cloak woven from every unkept promise
and every breath you thought was yours to spend forever.
My fingers are frost on the inside of the windowpane
where you once wrote your name in the mist of living.
I erase it, letter by letter,
until even the memory of the shape of you
is only a smudge the wind refuses to carry.
Time is my hound; it bays across the barren fields of your hours.
You hear it coming: the low, inevitable note
that drags the stars down like hooked fish
and leaves the sky a gutted lantern swinging in the dark.
I do not arrive with scythe or trumpet.
I arrive as the pause between heartbeats
that forgets to end.
I arrive as the mirror that finally admits
it has never reflected anything but me.
Your empires of skin and sinew
become quiet countries I annex without treaty.
Your cities of thought grow moss and silence;
the avenues where laughter once marched in bright regiments
are now boulevards of fern and dripping stone.
I keep your names in a jar of black glass.
Sometimes, for sport, I shake it.
The syllables rattle like dry seeds
that will never again be deceived by spring.
When you feel the first cold coin placed upon your tongue,
know it is not payment, but receipt.
When the dark begins to taste of iron and lilacs,
know the lilacs are mine; I grow them in the ruins of lungs.
There is no haste in me.
I have widowed galaxies.
I have taught stones to forget they were ever mountains.
I am the long unravelling,
the slow applause of bones settling into dust.
Lie down.
The bed was always mine;
I merely lent it to your dreaming
for the brief, hilarious season
you mistook for eternity.
Come.
The corridor is longer than grief,
narrower than forgiveness,
and at its end
I wait,
patient as rot,
smiling the small, courteous smile
of one who has never been anywhere else
and never will leave.
I am the lengthening shadow that swallows the sun at vespers,
the hush that gathers in the rafters when the last lamp gutters.
I walk the corridors of the marrow, barefoot, patient,
trailing a cloak woven from every unkept promise
and every breath you thought was yours to spend forever.
My fingers are frost on the inside of the windowpane
where you once wrote your name in the mist of living.
I erase it, letter by letter,
until even the memory of the shape of you
is only a smudge the wind refuses to carry.
Time is my hound; it bays across the barren fields of your hours.
You hear it coming: the low, inevitable note
that drags the stars down like hooked fish
and leaves the sky a gutted lantern swinging in the dark.
I do not arrive with scythe or trumpet.
I arrive as the pause between heartbeats
that forgets to end.
I arrive as the mirror that finally admits
it has never reflected anything but me.
Your empires of skin and sinew
become quiet countries I annex without treaty.
Your cities of thought grow moss and silence;
the avenues where laughter once marched in bright regiments
are now boulevards of fern and dripping stone.
I keep your names in a jar of black glass.
Sometimes, for sport, I shake it.
The syllables rattle like dry seeds
that will never again be deceived by spring.
When you feel the first cold coin placed upon your tongue,
know it is not payment, but receipt.
When the dark begins to taste of iron and lilacs,
know the lilacs are mine; I grow them in the ruins of lungs.
There is no haste in me.
I have widowed galaxies.
I have taught stones to forget they were ever mountains.
I am the long unravelling,
the slow applause of bones settling into dust.
Lie down.
The bed was always mine;
I merely lent it to your dreaming
for the brief, hilarious season
you mistook for eternity.
Come.
The corridor is longer than grief,
narrower than forgiveness,
and at its end
I wait,
patient as rot,
smiling the small, courteous smile
of one who has never been anywhere else
and never will leave.
