(...)

(…)

I whisper what I cannot confess:
Sweet nothings to my loneliness.
I cannot escape this shroud that I wear.
On graveyard trails in the barren nowhere.

My death is in love with the shape
Of the moments that I can’t escape,
While my hand hangs helpless
For what it can never caress.

In the haunted house of mirrors
Through the glass of yesteryears,
In each shard of blood upon the floor,
I saw the form of what I was before:

Pale days of shadows those days had been,
When the world I knew had lost its green—
An ancient sky wept through all the beams
Of a sun setting to the realm of horrid dreams.

And I wept as I stared into the echoes
Of the aurora of the olden shadows,
While faded the star of the cerulean hours
As they yawned o’er the ruin of the flowers.

Wilted was that field in the bejeweled night,
Whose forbidden flames shone beyond sight.
Naught of luster nor of bliss could be seen
Of the world as it should have been.

Yea! I wept in that world which once I knew
Ere I saw the beauty that lives in you.
You stripped the ache of empires fallen,
And returned the stars, long forgotten.

Young skies smile on you, golden crowned,
O! Precious King whose throne I have found.
In place of the glass is the longed-for embrace
Safe from the dark by the light of your grace.

© 2021 Marten Hoyle