Post by amelie on May 5, 2004 13:27:56 GMT -5
A child died about a year ago,
And there was no poetry in it
Or anything like that.
She was just no longer there,
And left a silence no wailing
Or desperate pleading could fill.
No universe of sound could
Reach down and drag
Enough rage to sate
That empty maw of oblivion;
That vacuum of all hope;
I lost belief that day.
‘Take me, take me!’
But nobody did.
Instead, just a going and gone;
A beat, a breath, then none.
A flatline to the horizon,
Devoid of perspective,
And a wasted journey
I have seen too often.
I am like a crab scuttling across
The floor of silent seas,
Scavenging bits of mortality
In amongst the drifting silt;
A scurrilous vanity, to give
A moment more, here and there.
There are many more battles to fight.
Many more faces of children dying;
And there is no sentimentality in it;
All is waste and culpability.
Death is always at my shoulder;
We are combatants he ad I;
But we deal in the same flesh;
He would like me as a friend.
I peddle promises and false hope;
A mendicant of weary science;
He, a dilettante of all destiny;
We both know who has the upper hand.
