The Dead

“The Dead”

I long to weep all my remaining years,
Alas! there are no more tears.
From behind my eyes, they long to fall
For haunted memories I endure to recall
Such death. Ah! Such death as this
In the light that is nearly blackness.

I hear them screaming. Or are these voices mine?
Demonian reflections, somehow (nearly) divine.
What secrets among their choir are told
In this ageless twilight of sinister cold?
Dead. All dead within the twilight
No peace awaits them in the night
That shall never dawn.
Where? Where have they gone?
What lies beyond the grave’s shadow
Where all is discord, and all is woe?

I hear them…I hear them, thunderous:
The dead. The Plutonian chorus.
Or is that my own voice? Do I sing
In dread among the haunts of suffering?
I see a form, shrouded and infirm:
The profane feast of the coffin worm
Beyond the blackness of the pall.
I kneel at his side, but the tears do not fall.
I kiss the skull that I would leave behind,
But our bodies, in death, are entwined.
In the light that is nearly darkness,
I am chained forever to the carcass
Never weeping, never bleeding
While on my heart the worm is feeding.
I hear them…I hear them…the choir
Or is that my own voice upon the funeral pyre?
I hear them…I hear them singing, though I am alone…
I hear them…but are these voices my own?

© 2022 Marten Hoyle