Tragic Sin

Hold my hand and bid farewell
Where our horizons sorrowing fell,
Yet still I must dare tell
I heed the siren call
Of the night’s dejected pall
And my fears live each and all,
In the shades that haunt and play
With my spirit through the day
And the dark sweeps my embrace away,
While all I imagine
Is the flame—the flame of tragic sin.

Below the murmuring sky
Where I drift and dreaming lie
I hold close to the dead
Who visit my shadowed bed;
How they feast in their greed
To the space the stars decreed
I plant their seed
Where I bleed.

I pray—will they someday
Leave and no more torment
My soft and low lament?
I dream—will they imagine
Something more than tragic sin?
If I can wake from the city gate
Where lies the inglorious fate
I may sing a new imagining’s sea
To the solitude of starless agony.